nders at the carnival I am one. Our
aloofness is mainly irrational, I suppose. It is due mainly to
temperamental Toryism. We say 'The old is better.' This we say to
ourselves, every one of us feeling himself thereby justified in his
attitude. But we are quite aware that such a postulate would not be
accepted by time majority. For the majority, then, let us make some
show of ratiocination. Let us argue that, forasmuch as London is an
historic city, with many phases and periods behind her, and forasmuch
as many of these phases and periods are enshrined in the aspect of her
buildings, the constant rasure of these buildings is a disservice to
the historian not less than to the mere sentimentalist, and that it
will moreover (this is a more telling argument) filch from Englishmen
the pleasant power of crowing over Americans, and from Americans the
unpleasant necessity of balancing their pity for our present with envy
of our past. After all, our past is our point d'appui. Our present is
merely a bad imitation of what the Americans can do much better.

Ignoring as mere scurrility this criticism of London's present, but
touched by my appeal to his pride in its history, the average citizen
will reply, reasonably enough, to this effect: 'By all means let us
have architectural evidence of our epochs--Caroline, Georgian,
Victorian, what you will. But why should the Edvardian be ruled out?
London is packed full of architecture already. Only by rasing much of
its present architecture can we find room for commemorating duly the
glorious epoch which we have just entered. To this reply there are two
rejoinders: (1) let special suburbs be founded for Edvardian buildings;
(2) there are no really Edvardian buildings, and there won't be any.
Long before the close of the Victorian Era our architects had ceased to
be creative. They could not express in their work the spirit of their
time. They could but evolve a medley of old styles, some foreign, some
native, all inappropriate. Take the case of Mayfair. Mayfair has for
some years been in a state of transition. The old Mayfair, grim and
sombre, with its air of selfish privacy and hauteur and leisure, its
plain bricked facades, so disdainful of show--was it not redolent of
the century in which it came to being? Its wide pavements and narrow
roads between--could not one see in them the time when by day gentlemen
and ladies went out afoot, needing no vehicle to whisk them to a
destination, and wa