with difficulty. I allude to good taste and bad taste. Nor in this paper shall I only speak of the first, but trust to lead you to its beauties by exposing the faults of the second. "What we call taste, says Jones of Nayland, in the metaphorical sense of the word, is that faculty by which we distinguish beauty and excellence in works of art, as the palate distinguishes what is pleasant in meat and drink. The latter faculty is natural, the former, so far as it signifies judgment, is the result of education and experience, and can only be found in a cultivated mind. Arts and sciences are so nearly related among themselves, that your judgment in one will always want some assistance from your knowledge of another. Whence it comes to pass that of people who pretend to taste, not one in twenty really possess it."

The greatest enemies to good taste are fashion, inattention, ignorance, and prejudice. As regards the first of these, without enquiring into the motives which direct us, we are all aware how easily and innocently we are led away by it. The present rage is modern Gothic and debased Italian. Our young men have tired of the old well beaten road and have struck out into the enchanting paths of unrestrained fancy, led by a set of bold guides who they term, and who are generally known as "devilish clever fellows," men who ransack the works of those old artists, whose merits are novelty of design, knowledge of pictorial effect and fecund imagination, whose faults are all these good principles carried to an excess for want of a well regulated judgment, and these do they not only copy, but exaggerate in order to satisfy the cravings of that epicurean glutton, Fashion. But when we consider the materials with which the architect works, I question much whether he is justified in these caprices, in thus falling in with and too often leading this fureur du temps. Ours is an art more public, more liable to continual criticism and as durable as any, how careful ought we then to be in our designs, how assiduous in avoiding faults! how ardent in the attainment of its real excellencies! On this point I 'cannot do better than quote the words of Mr. Alison: "In all those arts that respect the beauty of form," says he, it ought to be the unceasing study of the artist to disengage his mind from the accidental associations of his age,