Admitting to the full the great skill and knowledge which the designs display and which prove that Webb was not unworthy of the august influence which placed him under the tuition of Inigo Jones, it is nevertheless no great matter for regret that the palace was never built. It can hardly be held that the complete design maintains the high standard of the Banqueting House. Much of it indeed verges on the commonplace. So vast a building would have been a burden on any monarch; it would inevitably have fallen from its high estate, and would probably have drifted to being put to such ignoble uses as was the much smaller palace of the Louvre in Paris. If fate had been less relentless it might eventually have been devoted to some public use for which it was ill-contrived--public offices or a museum. Architecture, although apparently the most permanent of all the arts, suffers most from change. Buildings may remain, but the uses for which they were designed either cease or are so modified that the buildings become unsuitable. Then follows degradation, decay, or even destruction: at the luckiest, a diversion from the original purpose. The Banqueting House itself is a case in point; for who among those who inspect the interesting collection it now contains have any notion of why it was built, or can picture, even faintly, the scenes enacted within its walls? [Illustration: FIG. 41.--SKETCHES FOR PARTS OF THE PALACE AT WHITEHALL, BY WEBB. From the Chatsworth Collection.] [Illustration: FIG. 42.--ELEVATIONS OF A HOUSE, BY INIGO JONES. From the Burlington-Devonshire Collection at the Royal Institute of British Architects.] In addition to the direct evidence which goes to show that Jones was not the designer of the palace at Whitehall, there is the evidence of such architectural drawings as are either actually signed by him, or such as can almost certainly be attributed to him. All told, these amount to comparatively few, and they exhibit curious inconsistencies. Some are almost puerile, although drawn when he was mature in years. Others (and these are more numerous) are strong, simple, and noble, full of restraint, and depending chiefly upon proportion for their effect (Fig. 42). They are large in scale, and are mainly drawn with a free hand. Indeed it is characteristic of Jones to draw to a large scale and with little aid from instruments. He appears to have been impatient of petty details, and it is extremely doubtful whether he could have brought his wide-sweeping hand down to the working out of a complicated plan on the small scale actually employed in the Whitehall drawings.[31]