380 NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

mitted himself by expressing them, contributed to make his work more really valuable from the extreme accuracy and caution which it every where exhibits. Whatever the causes may have been, the fact is certain that he did produce a most valuable and well-considered system, and that few sciences can boast of so good an elementary treatise, more especially as a first essay on the subject ; and though nearly forty years have now passed over since he first published his system in the form of lectures to crowded audiences at the Literary Institution at Liverpool, and though he lived to issue four editions of his work, each adding fresh examples in support of his views, yet no one has been able to correct any material point of his system, and it is surprising to notice how very little information has really been added to the mass which he collected with such extraordinary diligence. It is much to be regretted that some of the active and zealous young men Avho so enthusiastically pursue this now fashionable study, do not imitate the industry of the humble quaker in collecting facts, and consider how much they are indebted to him for all they know of the subject, instead of taking every opportunity of expressing their contempt for his labours. Whether his nomenclature is the best that could have been invented is not now the question ; his divisions of the styles are so clear and true, and the precision with which he has discriminated their characteristic features is so inimitable, that his work must always remain the basis on which all others treating of the same subject must necessarily build. This is the only ex- cuse that can be ofi'ered for what otherwise would be the gross plagiarism manifested in all the treatises that have subsequently appeared, extending frequently to extracting many successive pages verbatim, without acknow- ledgment ^ and in all to the free use of his facts, his arguments, and his conclusions, without the addition of more than a mere fraction to the infor- mation he had collected. That his nomenclature presents some anomalies is not disputed, but it has been so long established, and is so generally understood by all classes, that any attempt to change it now is merely to drive us back to the chaos from which his genius has happily delivered us. We now have a language which is understood alike by emploj^ers, archi- tects, builders, and workmen ; if we attempt to change it, we shall have each of these classes using a different language, a very Babel let loose again. Nor has any better system or better nomenclature been proposed. The objections which present themselves at first sight to the new nomenclature are at least as great as those that are complained of in the establishe4 one. Mr. Bold, in his " History of all the principal Styles of Architecture," published in 1830, adopted the plan of calling the three styles of Gothic merely First, Second, and Third, in order to avoid as much as possible the » See " Aunt Elinor's Lectures on aheady passed into merited oblivion. The Architecture," which however is a useful idea was a good one, but the execution of little book for children. it very indifferent. " This slight and superficial work has