ond and third; finding experimentally that the former
character was not easily legible, and conceiving that the book would be
none the worse for this practical illustration of its own principles, in
a daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience.

These alphabetical Indices will, however, be of little use, unless
another, and a very different kind of Index, be arranged in the mind of
the reader; an Index explanatory of the principal purposes and contents
of the various parts of this essay. It is difficult to analyze the
nature of the reluctance with which either a writer or painter takes it
upon him to explain the meaning of his own work, even in cases where,
without such explanation, it must in a measure remain always disputable:
but I am persuaded that this reluctance is, in most instances, carried
too far; and that, wherever there really is a serious purpose in a book
or a picture, the author does wrong who, either in modesty or vanity
(both feelings have their share in producing the dislike of personal
interpretation), trusts entirely to the patience and intelligence of the
readers or spectators to penetrate into their significance. At all
events, I will, as far as possible, spare such trouble with respect to
these volumes, by stating here, finally and clearly, both what they
intend and what they contain; and this the rather because I have lately
noticed, with some surprise, certain reviewers announcing as a
discovery, what I thought had lain palpably on the surface of the book,
namely, that "if Mr. Ruskin be right, all the architects, and all the
architectural teaching of the last three hundred years, must have been
wrong." That is indeed precisely the fact; and the very thing I meant to
say, which indeed I thought I had said over and over again. I believe
the architects of the last three centuries to have been wrong; wrong
without exception; wrong totally, and from the foundation. This is
exactly the point I have been endeavoring to prove, from the beginning
of this work to the end of it. But as it seems not yet to have been
stated clearly enough, I will here try to put my entire theorem into an
unmistakable form.

The various nations who attained eminence in the arts before the time of
Christ, each of them, produced forms of architecture which in their
various degrees of merit were almost exactly indicative of the degrees
of intellectual and moral energy of the nations which originated them;
and each reached its