ten by an eminent architect. With unsparing
pen the author sketches a character, Georgius Oldhausen by name, F.S.A.,
professor of architecture of a very advanced order. The work is well
executed, and we can almost see before us the architect who, disdaining
such insignificant matters as good planning, stability of construction,
and convenient disposition of parts, claims to be an artist pure and
simple, and, leaving practical matters entirely out of the question,
goes in heavily for the picturesque and pure mediaeval, Queen Anne, or
Jacobean, as the case may be. Let us follow him as he conducts a friend
over a church and conventual establishment in course of construction.

"Your rooms," says Monsignore, "seem to me to be made almost as
uncomfortable as they possibly can be."

"Why, of course!" exclaims the astonished artist, fixing his glass
somewhat indignantly in his eye. "What you call uncomfortable I call
quaint."

"Very possibly I should call it the same; but, my dear sir, _cui bono_?"

"_Cui bono!_" answers the architect contemptuously. "That's what all
modern people say; that's the horrible mistake of the whole modern
world. We shall never recover the tone of the old men till we get rid of
such jargon. Now, just for an instant, imagine the fathers of this abbey
of ours going in for wash-hand-basins!"

He drops his eye-glass in sheer dismay at such an idea. They next visit
the refectory. Master Georgius here excels himself. "I'm going in for
doing it inside in red brick, and vaulting it in red brick too, with
black diaper-patterns all over, you know."

"How pretty!"

"I hope not," (dropping his glass.) "The diapers will be quite
irregular, and full of what you would very likely call mistakes."

"A sort of intentional accidents, George."

"Yes; not a bad term. And then the joints will be all raked out roughly,
and the brick-work smeared, you know. I have quite a new idea about
that. I mean to go in for letting the workmen have the use of all the
rooms, with liberty to smudge them as much as they like; and so at the
end we shall have a sort of antique effect, you know."

"They will be dirty."

"You may call it dirt," says Georgius, refixing his eye-glass. "I call
it art. And there will be marks here and there where the fellows have
lighted fires, you know."

"And caricatures on the walls, I suppose."

"Of course. I shall go in for that very much. I shall offer a prize for
the quaintest. I'll have the