CHAPTER I.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns theedifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of themmay contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.

It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguishcarefully between Architecture and Building.

To build,—literally, to confirm, — is by common understandingto put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice orreceptacle of a considerable size. Thus we have church building,house building, ship building, and coach building. That oneedifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on ironsprings, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it maybe called, of building or edification. The persons who professthat art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whateverother name their work may justify; but building does not becomearchitecture merely by the stability of what it erects; and it isno more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it toreceive and contain with comfort a required number of personsoccupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture Avhichmakes a carriage commodious, or a ship swift. I do not, of course,mean that the word is not often, or even may not be legitimately,applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval architecture); butin that sense architecture ceases to be one of the fine arts, and itis therefore better not to run the risk, by loose nomenclature, ofthe confusion which would arise, and has often arisen, fromextending principles which belong altogether to building, intothe sphere of architecture proper.

Let us, therefore, at once confine the name to that art which,