interior composition of animal bodies, that the parts concealed by the exterior frame, and so not objects of common sight, even what are called the noble parts, those of most important use, with remarkable exception for the heart, are without grace of form, and rather of offensive appearance.

Nevertheless, with whatever exceptions, a natural and necessary connection between the useful and the graceful seems to me evident, Perhaps it is no where more obvious than in naval architecture. The simple hull of the smallest boat, to be accommodated to swift motion and ready guidance through the water, requires a form of high elegance; beautiful lines, beautifully varied, giving a complexity to the shape, almost equal to that of the limbs of animals, and preserving unity of general design almost equally. If from this simple small machine, we look through all the classes, up to that stupendous production of human art a first rate ship of war, we see throughout, where use alone has directed, it has led always (I think always) to graceful forms and graceful proportions. In a large ship on the stocks, with the ribs only placed on the long connecting line of the keel, there is a harmony, with a variety, of converging and diverging lines, wonderfully beautiful. And it is remarkable enough how much the contrary has

happened in shipbuilding, wherever the line of use has been quitted. The French have often done better; but nothing can be more inelegant and even barbarous than the general style of decoration of the ships of our royal navy. It may suffice to mention the forms of architecture, borrowed from stone buildings, and ridiculously misapplied, in reeling attitudes, to machines of timber, of which motion, and deviation from the perpendicular, are essential properties.

Of the picturesk and beautiful, Gratification of the Mind through the Eye is the ultimate object. But, of architecture, Use is the first object; gratification of the mind through the eye but secondary. If then the beauty of picture depends, in any degree, on utility, or the semblance of utility, in the objects it represents, much more surely must the grace of architecture rest on evident utility. It is not that what is useful will therefore be beautiful; but that what is strikingly adverse to use will be offensive, and so will be adverse to the purpose of beauty, which is to please. The picturesk however, as distinguished from the beautiful, has I think, less than the proper beautiful, any essential connection with the useful. But those forms which, among infinitely varying tastes, the general sense of mankind reckons beautiful, have all, I am inclined to believe, a natural and necessary and intimate connection with the

useful. I say those forms which the general sense of mankind has agreed to call beautiful: because, after the various attempts of very ingenious, very learned, and very able men to analyze and define beauty, there is yet no complete agreement. Nor, in attempts to define the sublime has there been more success. Indeed I cannot help doubting if it would not have been better to have left those matters as Longinus, I will not say was contented to leave them, but rested in having them; and that the world of letters should have continued to defer to his long-allowed authority.

But though I think there is large connection between utility and beauty, yet, in treating of architecture it will be expedient to distinguish between the simply useful, and the beautiful; of which, though the semblance of fitness for use may be an essentisl quality, yet gratification of the mind through the eye, and not real use, is the substantial object. Architecture is essentially among the useful arts. Through its power to impress ideas of the sublime and beautiful, it becomes associated among the ornamental arts, or those commonly called the fine arts. Hence arise two distinct characters of Design in architecture, the useful and the ornamental. The term Design certainly may be properly applicable to both. But, in the practice of language it is more commonly limited to Architecture considered as one of the

fine arts, the sister of Painting, than extended to it as simply a useful art. Of all the fine arts, however, architecture far the most holds necessary and close connection with the useful; for it is obvious that for the most merely ornamental edifice, the useful in building must be regarded, to make the edifice even hold together.

LETTER III.

First Buildings noticed in History.-Tower of Babel.-Jacob's Pillars.-Egyptian Building.-Temple of Dagon.-Temple of Jerusalem and Solomon's Palace.

THE

HE great field for Design in Architecture will of course be found in building for a large community rather than for an individual, in structures sacred, civil, or military, rather than domestic, in monuments for a nation rather than for a family. But the perfection of design, which has been attained in public building, may afterward, with judgement in the application, contribute to the elegance of private and domestic -architecture. Public buildings, however, having first attracted the notice of historians and recorders of events, those who would trace the history of architecture, must necessarily begin with them.

That extraordinary public building, mentioned,

in my first letter, as the earliest on record, the tower of Babel, was of so early an age that it may be supposed to have been raised by art derived from antediluvian times, and to have exhibited some features of antediluvian design. The form of the building, however, is not at all indicated by the historian. But the principal material, it will not be alien to our

purpose

Hence it appears

among assembled

to remark, was artificial; it was brick; and, we are told, well-burnt brick. that, even at that time, mankind, the art of building was not in absolute infancy.

But the people of whom, after the dispersion at Babel, the oldest extant history proceeds to treat, had no cities. In the manner of the' modern Arabs and Tartars, living in incampments, their dwellings were accommodated to ready removal. Civil architecture therefore they could little know. Their altars and their monumental pillars, alone of their buildings, would last to posterity. Of their altars we find frequent mention. The first monumental pillar on record, raised for lasting evidence of a contract, I have already noticed. The first sepulchral monument follows, in the same history, erected by the same person. In the age of Abraham, and of his son Isaac, a natural cavern appears to have been