The first demand in the days of good architecture was, that
the building should have an independent artistic value beyond its use.
This is what architecture requires; for architecture is building,
_pure_,--building for its own sake, not as means. What Mr. Garbett says
is, no doubt, quite true,--that nothing was ever made, for taste's sake,
less efficient than it might have been. But many things were made _more_
efficient than they might have been; or, rather, this is always the
character of good architecture. It is in this surplus of perfection,
above bare necessity, that its claim to rank among the fine arts
consists. This character the builders of the good times, accordingly,
never left out of sight; so that, if their means were limited, they
lavished all upon one point,--made that overflow with riches, and left
the rest plain and bare; never did they spread their pittance thin to
cover the whole, as we do. It is for this reason that so few of the
great cathedrals were finished, and that in buildings of all kinds we so
often find the decoration in patches, sharply marked off from the rest
of the structure. This noble profuseness is not, indeed, necessarily
decoration; the essence of it is an independent value and interest in
the building, aside from the temporary and accidental employment.
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