Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/462

 l^otkt% of ^rt^ntological ^ublfcnti'ons. A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. By Edward A. Freeman, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Masters, 1849. 8vo. This work, we are informed, was originally intended to form a volume in "Burn's Select Library;" and however much we may differ from the author in many of his theories and deductions, it must be admitted that he has produced a treatise possessing the merit of very systematic arrange- ment, and written in a fluent and attractive style. It is to be regretted, however, that Mr. Freeman should not have more strictly confined himself to the task he had undertaken, which was a sufficiently arduous one, without stepping aside and in his preface even challenging the whole body of Archaeologists by such sentences as the following, and which we are bound in self-defence not to pass by unnoticed. He says — "For I would repeat, at the risk of weariness both to myself and my readers, that it is not to Archaeology or Archaeologians that I object, but to the ■position which they assume. Their researches are valuable and necessary ; it is only to the hostile tone ivhich they often assume, the uneasiness and jealousy xvhich their organ invariably displays at anything like the deduction of a principle or a theory, that any objection can be brought, and against this hardly objection can be too strong. I may allude to one subject in which I have certainly no sort of jjersonal bias. The nomenclature of the ecclesiologists I neither employ nor approve, but the manner in ivhich any use of it is met with in certain quarters, the frivolous, contradictory, often spiteful objections ivhich I have seen and heard brought against it, ivotdd he almost enough to make me introduce it even now into every j^age of my book, had I not myself objections to it far stronger, as I hope, than those to which I refer. " It is not Archaeology in its right place as something subordinate and ancillary, but Archaeology exclusive, assuming, claiming a rank ivhich does not belong to it, which is at this moment the bane, not only of Architecture, but of a yet nobler study of history itself as relating to the times and people most decj)ly interesting to us. A neivly discovered, Sc. dc." Now, it is not very clear from this on what ground we have unfortunately incurred the author's displeasure ; but if he means that we, as Archaeologists, are apt to judge of Architecture simply by its own merits, and not accord- ing to the fanciful notions of some well-meaning but enthusiastic Ecclesio- logists, we readily plead guilty to the charge. We prefer that our judg- ment should be guided by the rules of common sense or sound discretion, rather than that our imagination should be dazzled by the speculative but seductive doctrines of symbolism, with all its attendant train of unmeaning theories and erroneous conclusions. As to the subordinate rank which Mr. Freeman is pleased to assign to the science of Archaeology (reducing