and construction that would be ordinarily used in buildings for purely
practical purposes, and give to these materials and this construction
forms that will excite the proper emotions. You must not suppose that I
mean that if you have a vast hall, or what not, that because you can put
an iron trussed roof over it from wall to wall, that this will make it
into a hall that will raise emotions. You will only get a rail-way
platform or a coal shed. You have got to set your wits to work to see
how it can be properly brought within the pale of aesthetics, and not
only as to the shapes and proportions of the parts, but the dividing of
the whole by supports. It is probable that if you were obliged to vault
a cathedral in stone, with no more money than was necessary, and to have
a clearstory to it, that you could not do it cheaper, and perhaps not
better, than the Gothic architects did it; but to vault such a building
in stone when you could do it much cheaper and better with iron ribs and
concrete is, in my opinion, _dilettante_ art. Groins are not beautiful
things, but, on the contrary, are ugly, and we should wish to obviate
their ugliness if we could; but when they were merely unavoidable
methods of cheap construction, we admire them for the invention and
skill of their architects, and we have to some extent got to love even
their ugliness from old association; though perhaps the ribs at
Westminster Abbey, as seen from the west end, are not offensive."

[Illustration: XII. A Portion of the Façade of the Basilica at Altamura,
Italy.]




The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration.