NOT TO BE CONFOUNDED WITH EXPRESSION.
25
in its general aspect quite as much or even more of the club-house than of the ordinary villa character and of another*(an assurance office), that “it might pass for a club-house.”The critic does not appear to regard this in either case, indeed,as a fault: but what we have to observe here is the singularforce of association, by which the use of this manner in twoLondon club-houses suffices to stamp it forthwith as a sort ofclub-house style ,—if not absolutely unfit for other purposes, atleast peculiarly appropriate to this. If such a principle ofcriticism be once allowed to creep in, nothing more is requiredto complete the utter ruin of this once noble but now deeplydegraded art.
It is most important for all who attempt either to practiseor understand this art, to be perpetually on their guard againstthe insidious attacks of this error, the mistaking false (». e.acquired) expression for that which is natural, and thereforepermanently true. I cannot but consider this the chief sourceof the acknowledged great utility of travel to the architect.Its use is not to show him much of the world, but to teachhim how little of it he has seen. Nothing but the emancipa-tion from narrow local prejudices will set a man thinking andsearching in earnest to distinguish what is local and acci-dental, in beauty and expression, from what is universal andessential.
I do not mean to imply that time-hallowed associations(such as that, for instance, which connects the Gothic stylewith our religious edifices) are to be wantonly broken through ;only that, when any such are proved to be mere associations,they may (though still respected) not be suffered for a momentto have preference before such as may have been proved to benot accidental, but essential. Use, says the proverb, is secondnature; but it is not therefore to be placed above Natureherself. Sir J. Reynolds speaks of these accidental associ-ations under the name of “ apparent truths,” or “ truths upou
B