amateur, is to be the order of the day. Mr Geoffrey Scott is enthusiastically described as the 'Gibbon of Architecture.' Need I remind the writers that Gibbon was a historian? The writers refer to the delicate question of the public criticism of contemporary architecture by architects who are themselves in practice, and they appear to be in favour of it on the ground that authors and savants in the same line habitually review each other,' and that it is only in this way that the public can obtain really competent criticism. The cases are not parallel. Literary men may fairly criticise each other in regard to the fact that they use the same language, and that there is no mystery of specialised technique. Scientific men criticise each other, but it is on the question of facts. In architecture it is not a question of facts but of aesthetic, a matter of taste. To put it mildly, it seems to me unsportsmanlike for one architect to criticise another in the public press so long as they are both in the arena. Such criticism, based as it often is on inadequate knowledge, is apt to degenerate into advertisement and log-rolling on the one hand, and to neglect and disparagement on the other, the treatment accorded to Wren throughout the last few years of his life. There is an excellent rule at the Royal Academy that in lectures given within its walls no reference is permitted to the work of living artists, and in this regard architects would do well to observe the strict and honourable etiquette of the medical profession. It is most desirable that the public should have a better understanding of architecture, but I suggest that this is more likely to be brought about by the patient study of the art than by the straight tip in modern practice. The 'Pleasures of Architecture' has justified its existence to the extent of arriving at a second edition, but it is a little difficult to understand the point of view from which this book is written. It seems to be based on no principle, to proceed on no system, and to lead nowhere. Architecture should, no doubt, be brought into the market-place, but need this be done to the accompaniment of a jazz band?

Mr Geoffrey Scott's essay on The Architecture of Humanism' stands on quite another footing. It is a clever and in places a brilliantly written thesis on the

principles of architectural criticism, and though he arrives at some eccentric and, as it seems to me, quite arbitrary conclusions, it is a valuable contribution to criticism. He addresses himself to the groundwork of architecture and the point of view from which it should be approached, and quoting Sir Henry Wotton, Well building hath three conditions: commodity, firmness, and delight,' he selects 'delight'-that is, the aesthetic pleasure to be derived from architecture-as the ultimate justification of the art. Arguing from this premise he demolishes in turn the Romantic fallacy-that is, the habit of criticising architecture from the point of view of its literary associations-which led Diderot to say that· buildings had little or no interest till they were ruined, the mechanical fallacy which resolves architecture into terms of statics and dynamics, the ethical fallacy which treats it as mainly an affair of morals, and the biological fallacy which regards architecture as a matter of evolution, without regard to the æsthetic values of the different stages of its development. With Mr Scott's demonstration of the inadequacy of these methods of criticism one is in full agreement, but there is a flaw in his premises, and though it is not always easy to catch the drift of his sonorous sentences, his conclusion seems to me to be wilfully perverse. Mr Scott writes well, and in several passages with real eloquence, yet somehow his essay in criticism gives the impression of an ingenious exercise in dialectic, such as a Sophist might have written in support of the Baroque.

In the first place, what is architecture? Is it a serious art, or is it play-acting? Mr Scott begs the question when out of the three conditions he selects aesthetic value as the sole criterion, and as an architect himself he can hardly intend to eliminate plan and construction as unessential elements and restrict the art of architecture to the frontispiece. Yet, in fact, this is just what the Italians of the 17th century did; provided they got a grandiose and startling effect they seem to have been indifferent how the effect was arrived at. They cared only for show, and after the fine flame of the great architects of the Renaissance-Peruzzi, let us say, or Sanmichele-had burnt itself out, the melodramatic instinct of the Italians asserted itself and carried all, or

nearly all, before it. Mr Scott quite rightly points out that this care for appearances only, and this craving for something startling and dramatic, were at the back of Baroque architecture, and he had here the material for a very interesting psychological study. Instead of this he arrives at the conclusion, remarkable in an architect, that the Baroque designers were right in taking this play-acting instinct as the dominant motive of their design, and indeed as the justification of architecture in general. If this were really the case, it would exclude some of the greatest masterpieces in the whole range of the art. Architecture is a very complex art, and cannot be treated on a single issue. It is, after all, the art of building under definite conditions and with a definite purpose, and that implies the adaptation of means to ends, the skilful ordering of materials in the endeavour to realise 'commodity ' and 'firmness' as well as 'delight.' Mr Scott's classification and his theory of architecture are attractive in their daring and simplicity, but they are unhappily wide of the facts and do not cover the ground.

Nor can one accept Mr Scott's reading of Italian Renaissance architecture. Sometimes he seems to be applying his peculiar view to the entire movement from its start in the 15th century till its end in the 18th. At other times he seems to limit it to the 17th-century men, such as Bernini and Borromini. Moreover, he repudiates the idea of advance. Each famous master was, he maintains, complete in himself. Bramante, for example, did not advance on Brunelleschi, but deliberately followed a line of his own, and we must regard them as separate constellations, each pursuing its appointed course. But in point of fact this is not how architecture, or any other art, develops. Each of us in our generation, whether moving backward or forward, does so in full consciousness of the work of our predecessors, and in the architecture of the Renaissance the various stages are clearly marked. The new movement began with scholars and men of letters. The spirit of adventure which led them to explore the Greek and Latin manuscripts of their patrons spread outwards to the artists and the craftsmen. In all cases, in Italy, as later in France and England, the ornamentalist leads the way Vol. 246.-No. 487.

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with his transcripts from antiquity ill-understood, and too often misapplied, and we get the interminable ornament, the friezes, orders, and arabesques which are not architecture at all, though they are commonly mistaken for it. The real movement in architecture begins with the advent of men of intellectual distinction: Alberti, for example, in Italy; De l'Orme in France; Inigo Jones in England. Their successors advanced on their labours. Bramante, for example, and still more Baldassone Peruzzi, were finer masters of their art than Alberti, though their debt to him was great, and it must be obvious to any student of Italian 16th- and 17th-century architecture that the range of its technique was steadily extending, so that when we come to the violent revolt of the Baroque architects against the formalism of Palladio and Vignola, whatever one may think of their buildings, there can be no question that they knew perfectly well what they were about so far as mere technique was concerned. Longhena, for example, had a wider range of technique than Palladio.

On the other hand, if the Renaissance is regarded, as I think it must be, as one vast comprehensive movement begun in Italy, but spreading far beyond it, it is impossible to regard the Baroque manner as typical of the Renaissance, still less as the peculiar architecture of Humanism. It is not quite clear what Mr Scott intends by Humanism. Sometimes he seems to mean the point of view of the finer minds of the Renaissance; sometimes simply human nature. Humanism, as I understand it, means the open tolerant mind, unfettered by dogmatic authority, that finds its interest in all the finer realisations of man. The true Humanist does not limit his outlook to one school or one manner. He would not set up one style against another, but in a way stands apart from them all, with preferences, it may be, yet not shutting the door on any. Mr Scott rightly insists that to reprobate the Baroque on moral grounds is irrelevant. One does not reprobate the clown in a circus. Indeed, one may be very much amused, but one would hardly regard him as a serious actor. Architects are concerned with bigger things and with graver appeals than are possible to the scene painter and the puppet-show man, and though one may derive pleasure and amusement from the antics of

the Baroque architects, one really cannot take them quite seriously. Indeed, I doubt if Mr Scott does himself; at any rate in his epilogue he shows signs of hedging.

In his concluding chapter Mr Scott deals with 'Humanist Values.' 'The whole of architecture,' he says, 'is in fact unconsciously invested by us with human movement or human moods.' We transcribe architecture into terms of ourselves.' This, he says, is the basis of creative design and of critical appreciation, and it amounts to this, that our æsthetic enjoyment of architecture is derived from our imagining ourselves as performing its actual static and dynamic functions. This theory, introduced by Signor Croce, has been fashionable for some time past, but all that is true in it was stated by Goethe when he said that man never knows how anthropomorphic he is; and it was better put by Plotinus, who held that the pleasure we derive from beautiful things is due to the soul's recognition of something in them akin to its own nature; and though this theory may have some slight relevance to critical appreciation it has none whatever to creative design. In architecture it is almost absurdly inappropriate. By an effort of imagination one might imagine oneself to be a column, or as leaning up against a wall as a buttress, or if one's abdominal muscles were sufficiently developed, a very short beam, but architecture is not an agglomeration of unrelated details. Its quality lies in the composition as a whole, the embodiment of an organic idea, and by no stretch of imagination can any one imagine himself as discharging the functions of the Colosseum, the Pantheon, or S. Peter's at Rome. Still less can this theory explain the value of graphic art, which is not in the round but in the flat unless one can think oneself into terms of a pancake. Nor is it in accord with actual experience. The pleasure that an educated person derives from a work of art is the result of appeals from many different elements, and depends largely on the range of imagination and sympathy of the spectator on the one hand, and on the extent of his knowledge on the other. A Red Indian, for instance, would be a competent judge of a wigwam, but if he was suddenly transplanted to St