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LESSON V.-OF THE USEFUL IN ARCHITECTURE.
A. J. DOWNING.

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1. THE senses make the first demand in almost every path in human life. The necessity of shelter from the cold and heat, from sun and shower, leads man at first to build a habitation.

2. What this habitation shall be depends partly on the habits of the man, partly on the climate in which he lives. If he is a shepherd, and leads a wandering life, he pitches a tent. If he is a hunter, he builds a rude hut of logs or skins. If he is a tiller of the soil, he constructs a dwelling of timber or stones, or lodges in the caverns of the rocky hill sides.

3. As a mere animal, man's first necessity is to provide a shelter; and, as he is not governed by the constructive instinct of other animals, the clumsiest form which secures him against the inclemency of the seasons often appears sufficient; there is scarcely any design apparent in its arrangement, and the smallest amount of convenience is found in its interior. This is the first primitive or savage idea of building.

4. Let us look a step higher in the scale of improvement. On the eastern borders of Europe is a tribe or nation called the Croats, who may be said to be only upon the verge. of civilization. They lead a rude forest and agricultural life.

They know nothing of the refinements of the rest of Europe. They live in coarse, yet strong and warm houses. But their apartments are as rude as their manners, and their cattle frequently share the same rooms with themselves.

5. Our third example may be found in many portions of the United States, and especially on our Western frontiers. It is nothing less common than a plain rectangular house, built of logs, or of timber from the forest saw-mill, with a roof to cover it, windows to light it, and doors to enter it. The heat is perhaps kept out by shutters, and the cold by fires burnt in chimneys. It is well and strongly built; it af fords perfect protection to the physical nature of man; and it serves, so far as a house can serve, all the most imperative wants of the body. It is a warm, comfortable, convenient dwelling.

6. It is easy to see that in all these grades of man's life, and the dwellings which typify them, only one idea has as yet manifested itself in his architecture that of utility. In the savage, the half civilized, and the civilized states, the idea of the useful and the convenient differ, but only in degree. It is still what will best serve the body-what will best shelter, lodge, feed, and warm us— -which demands the whole at

tention of the mere builder of houses.

7. It would be as false to call only this architecture as to call the gamut music, or to consider rhymes poetry; and yet it is the frame-work or skeleton on which architecture grows and wakens into life; without which, indeed, it can no more rise to the dignity of a fine art than perfect language can exist without sounds.

LESSON VI.-OF EXPRESSION IN CIVIL OR PUBLIC ARCHI

TECTURE.

1. PASSING beyond the merely useful in building, which is limited by man's necessities, the chief beauty of architecture, considered as one of the fine arts, is to be found in the expression of elevated and refined ideas of man's life. The first and most powerful expressions of this art are those of man's public life or of his religious and intellectual nature, as seen in the temple, the church, the capitol, or the gallery of art. Its secondary expression is confined to the manifestation of his social and moral feelings, as shown in the dwellings which he inhabits.

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2. In the forms of the Gothic cathedral are embodied the worshiping principle in man-the loving reverence for that which is highest and holiest, and the sentiment of Christian brotherhood. These harmonies are expressed in the principal lines, which are all vertical-that is, aspiring-tending upward; in the circumstance that the whole mass falls under or within the pyramidal form, which is that of flame or fire, symbolical of love; in the pointed character of all the openings, which, as expressive of firmness of base, denotes embracingness of tendency and upward ascension as its ultimate aim, and in the clustering and grouping of its multiple parts. Gothic architecture being thus representative rather of the unity of love than of the diversities of faith, it seems proper that it should be the style for all ecclesiastical and other purposes having reference to religious life.

3. But other forms of architecture are equally expressive. In Roman art we see the ideal of the State as fully manifested as is, in Gothic, the ideal of the Church. Its type-form, based on the simple arch, is the dome-the encircling, overspreading dome, whose centre is within itself, and which is the binding together of all for the perfection and protection of the whole. Hence the propriety of using this style in statehouses, capitols, Parliament-houses, town-halls, where this idea is to be expressed.

4. Again: we have, in the Greek temple, as it is found in the several Grecian orders, still another architectural type. As these orders have their individual expressions, as shown in the simple and manly Doric, the chaste Ionic, and the ornate Corinthian, they furnish the most suitable varieties of a harmoniously elegant style that can be conceived for simple halls, for courts of justice, for schools, and for public, oratorical, lecture, and philosophical rooms. Hence buildings which have but one object, and which require one expression of that object, can not be built in a style better adapted to convey the single idea of their use than in the Grecian temple form. Here every thing falls under the horizontal line the level line of rationality; it is all logical, orderly, syllogistically perfect, as the wisdom of the schools.-Literary World.

LESSON VII.-OF EXPRESSION IN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.

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1. IN domestic architecture, though the range of expression may at first seem limited, it is not so in fact; for, when complete, it ought to be significant of the whole private life of man-his intelligence, his feelings, and his enjoyments.

2. If we pass an ill-proportioned dwelling, in which the walls and roof are built only to defend the inmates against cold and heat, the windows intended for nothing but to admit the light and exclude the air, the chimneys constructed only to carry off the smoke, the impression, which that house makes upon us at a glance is that of mere utility.

3. If, on the other hand, the building is well proportioned; if there is a pleasing symmetry in its outward form; and, should it be large, if it display variety, harmony, and unity, we feel that it possesses much absolute beauty-the beauty of a fine form.

4. If, in addition to this, we observe that it has various marked features, indicating intelligent and cultivated life in its inhabitants; if it plainly shows, by its various apartments, that it is intended not only for the physical wants of man, but for his moral, social, and intellectual existence; if hospitality

smiles in ample parlors; if home virtues dwell in cozy fireside family rooms; if the love of the beautiful is seen in picture or statue galleries, intellectuality in well-stocked libraries, and even a dignified love of leisure and repose in cool and spacious verandas1, we feel, at a glance, that here we have reached the highest beauty of which domestic architecture is capable that of individual expression.

5. Hence every thing in architecture that can suggest or be made a symbol of social or domestic virtues, adds to its beauty and exalts its character. Every material object that becomes the type of the spiritual, moral, or intellectual nature of man, becomes at once beautiful, because it iş suggestive of the beautiful in human nature.

6. We are bound to add here that, in all arts, other thoughts may be expressed besides those of beauty. Vices may be expressed in architecture as well as virtues; the worst part of our natures as well as the best. A house built only with a view to animal wants, eating and drinking, will express sensuality instead of hospitality. A residence marked by gaudy and garish apartments, intended only to dazzle and impress others with the wealth or importance of the proprietor, will express pride and vanity instead of a real love of what is beautiful for its own sake; and a dwelling in which a large and conspicuous part is kept for show, to delude others into the belief of dignity or grace on our part, while our actual life is one in mean apartments, expresses any thing but honest sincerity of character,

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7. The different styles of domestic architecture, as the Roman, the Italian, the Swiss, the Venetian, the rural Gothic, are nothing more than expressions of national character, which have, through long use, become permanent. Thus the gay and sunny temperament of the south of Europe is well expressed in the light balconies, the grouped windows, the open arcades, and the statue and vase bordered terraces of the Ve netian and Italian villas; the homely, yet strong and quaint character of the Swiss in their broad-roofed, half rude, and cu riously constructed cottages; the domestic virtues, the love of home, rural beauty and seclusion, can not possibly be better expressed than in the English cottage, with its many upwardpointing gables, its intricate tracery, its spacious bay-windows, and its walls covered with vines and flowering shrubs.

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8. So far as an admiration of foreign style in architecture arises from the mere love of novelty, it is poor and contemptible; so far as it arises from an admiration of truthful beauty

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