upon to solve. The student can then compare his own solution of it
with the one that has come down to him, thus receiving correction and
guidance in his work from the hand of the master. It is plain that the
special excellencies of the original monument are likely to reveal
themselves with fresh distinctness, and to find special sympathy and
appreciation in the mind of one who has striven, however
unsuccessfully, to solve the same problem.

An example or two taken from widely different fields will suffice to
illustrate this. In studying vaulting, we once got so far as to
understand how oblong vaults were thrown across a nave, while square
vaults covered the aisles. A class of fifteen or twenty students were
then asked to find out how a semi-circular or polygonal apse could be
added to a choir roofed on this system. In the course of a couple of
hours' figuring I found that they had worked out among them all the
five solutions of this problem, which in the Middle Ages it took one
or two hundred years to develop. This was very encouraging. At another
time they were given a somewhat minute description of four pilaster
capitals from Blois or Chambord, and they made thumb-nail sketches on
the spot, according to their interpretation of the description. The
next day photographs and drawings of a dozen or twenty other such
capitals were given them, so that they might understand the fashion of
the time, and they were told to draw out their sketches on a larger
scale. The result was fifteen or twenty sets of capitals, all showing
the same four motives, but differing in a most interesting way,
according to the personal differences of taste and skill on the part
of the designers.

On another occasion the First-year class, after their studies in
Egyptian and Assyrian architecture, made a dozen or twenty