should choose the glorious architecture of the fourteenth century; and, just as no man has more than one hand-writing, so in this one language alone will he express his architectural ideas. We cannot leave this topic without referring to what the Cambridge Camden Society has said with respect to architectural competition. [Footnote 6] _It is a fact_ that at this time many competing designs are manufactured in an architect's office, by some of his clerks, as if by machinery: if a given plan is chosen, the architect is summoned, and sees _his_ (!) design for the first time, when he is introduced to the smiling committee-men. It is another fact that there is at this time in London a small body of persons, with no other qualification than that of having been draughtsmen in an architect's office, who _get up_ a set of competing designs for any aspirant who chooses to give them a few instructions, and to pay them for their trouble. How much it is to be wished that there were some examination of an architect's qualifications, before he should be allowed to assume the name! It seems strange that the more able members of the profession do not themselves feel some _esprit de corps_, and do not at {xxvi} least endeavour to claim for their art its full dignity and importance. We fear however that very few, as yet, take that _religions_ view of their profession, which we have shown to be seemly, even if not essential. If, however, we succeed in proving that religion enters very largely into the principles of church architecture, a religious _ethos_, we repeat, is _essential_ to a church architect. At all events, in an investigation into the differences between ancient and modern church architecture, the contrast between the ancient and modern builders could not be overlooked: and it is not too much to hope that some, at least, may be struck by the fact, that the deeply religious habits of the builders of old, the hours, the cloister, the discipline, the obedience, resulted in their matchless works; while the worldliness, vanity, dissipation, and patronage of our own architects issue in unvarying and hopeless failure. [Footnote 6: See _Ecclesiologist_, vol. i, pp. 69, 85.] We said that there were philosophical reasons for the belief that we must have architects--before we can have buildings--like those of old. If it be true that an esoteric signification, or, as we shall call it, _Sacramentality_, [Footnote 7] ran through all the arrangements and details of Christian architecture, emblematical of Christian discipline, and suggested by Christian devotion; then must the discipline have been practised, and the devotion felt, before a Christian temple can be reared. That this esoteric meaning, or symbolism, does exist, we are now to endeavour to prove.