rm seems to
be the most elastic and enduring of all the "short and easily-applied
rules" of the profession of architecture. It is, however, applied more
exclusively to the works of revivalists, and is frequently used in
advocacy of new methods and in condemnation of the old. The architects
of the Victorian School had had it impressed upon their minds by Pugin,
Eastlake, and others, that true construction did not exist after the
Middle Ages,--the period of massive timber framing, heavy tables,
mantel-trees, and settles, put together with wooden pins and disdaining
all curves and wavy lines. For a time these professors of artistic truth
were implicitly believed, and architects came to look upon stucco,
plastering, glue, veneers, broken pediments, and applied ornamentation
as monstrous emanations from diseased brains, bewildered and carried off
their balance by the great upheaval of the Renaissance.

The rapidity with which a change of sentiment was achieved is one of the
most remarkable phenomena in architectural history. The worshippers of
"truth" and the rest of the "Seven Lamps," the plaster-ornament-breakers
of 1860, became ten years later the loyal subjects of Queen Anne,
accepting without question the tenets of Stuart and Revett, the Adams,
and even of Nash and Wyatt, who carried the use of stucco and applied
ornamentation to the extremity of extravagance.

In studying the constructive features of the Queen Anne renaissance, we
find many examples of richly-ornamented facades, combined with affected
picturesqueness and quaintness unthought of two hundred years ago. How
are we to account for this change in favor of greater richness and
profusion of detail in a professed revival of the pure and simple forms
of the past, and for the well-established fact, easily recognized by the
student of architecture, that the Queen Anne brick-work of to-day owes
much of its effectiveness, constructively and aesthetically, to the
teaching of an earlier school,--that of the Tudors?

Decorative brick-work, as we find it used in English architecture, is
not simply the outgrowth of the Dutch school, introduced at the
accession of William of Orange. For centuries it had been employed with
success, particularly in Norfolk and other brick-districts. Under the
Tudor sovereigns, moulded and carved brick-work attained a high standard
of excellence. The buildings erected during this period were frequently
enriched with delicately wrought stri