genuine, if the whole design
is a sham, if the aim be only to excite the admiration of bystanders,
the thing is not altered, whether the bystanders are learned in such
matters or ignorant. The more excellent the work is in its kind, the
more insidious and virulent the falsity, if the whole occasion of it be
a pretence. If it must be false, let it by all means be gross and
glaring,--we shall be the sooner rid of it.

It may be asked whether, then, I surrender the whole matter of
appearance,--whether the building may as well be ugly as beautiful. By
no means; what I have said is in the interest of beauty, as far as it is
possible to us. Positive beauty it may be often necessary to forego, but
bad taste is never necessary. Ugliness is not mere absence of beauty,
but absence of it where it ought to be present. It comes always from a
disappointed expectation,--as where the lineaments that do not disgust
in the potato meet us in the human face, or even in the hippopotamus,
whom accordingly Nature kindly puts out of sight. It is bad taste that
we suffer from,--not plainness, not indifference to appearance, but
features misplaced, shallow mimicry of "effects" where their causes do
not exist, transparent pretences of all kinds, forcing attention to the
absence of the reality, otherwise perhaps unnoticed. The first step
toward seemly building is to rectify the relation between the appearance
and the uses of the building,--to give to each the weight that it really
has with us, not what we fancy or are told it ought to have. Mr. Ruskin
too often seems to imply that fine architecture is like virtue or the
kingdom of Heaven: that, if it be sought first, all other things will be
added. A sounder basis for design, beyond what is necessary to use,
seems to me that proposed by Mr. Garbett, (to whom we are indebted for
the most useful hints upon architecture,) namely, politeness, a decent
regard for the eyes of other people (and for one's own, for politeness
regards one's self as well). Politeness, however, as Mr. Garbett admits,
is chiefly a negative art, and consists in abstaining and not meddling.
The main character of the building being settled by the most
unhesitating consideration of its uses, we are to see that it disfigures
the world as little as possible.

Let me, at the risk of tediousness, proceed to bring these generalities
to a point by a few instances,--not intending to exhaust the topic, but
only to exemplify the method o