approximately contemporary in date and parallel in executive skill;
but, the one, a barbarism that did not get on, and could not get on;
the other, a barbarism that could get on, and did get on; and you, the
impanelled jury, shall judge what is the essential difference between
the two barbarisms, and decide for yourselves what is the seed of life
in the one, and the sign of death in the other.

The first,--that which has in it the sign of death,--furnishes us at
the same time with an illustration far too interesting to be passed by,
of certain principles much depended on by our common modern designers.
Taking up one of our architectural publications the other day, and
opening it at random, I chanced upon this piece of information, put in
rather curious English; but you shall have it as it stands--

"Aristotle asserts, that the greatest species of the beautiful are
Order, Symmetry, and the Definite."

I should tell you, however, that this statement is not given as
authoritative; it is one example of various Architectural teachings,
given in a report in the _Building Chronicle_ for May, 1857, of a
lecture on Proportion; in which the only thing the lecturer appears to
have proved was that,--

The system of dividing the diameter of the shaft of a column into
parts for copying the ancient architectural remains of Greece and Rome,
adopted by architects from Vitruvius (circa B.C. 25) to the present
period, as a method for producing ancient architecture, _is entirely
useless_, for the several parts of Grecian architecture cannot be
reduced or subdivided by this system; neither does it apply to the
architecture of Rome.