Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/216

204, is too apt to forget that, after all, he has neglected the consideration of utility; and that on the perfection of the adaptation of the structure to human needs must depend its real value, its true measure of success.

The Great Pyramid of Egypt, which is among the most ancient monuments in the world, has survived for thousands of years because each stone had a definite place, in which it was set with the greatest care. It owes its size and its endurance to a strict attention, on the part of its builders, to small things, and the exercise of an almost limitless patience. It teaches a profound truth, that in architecture no single thing is too unimportant to be treated in the best way; and, though we need not seek to erect buildings whose permanency will be of the type of the Pyramid of Cheops, we can at least apply to our structures the same care for the minor parts, believing that, as the members are, so will the whole be.

Architecture must express the life of any people in order to be successful. It is this which makes former styles so admirable, and it is this element that is so sadly wanting in our own. We must not make our lives conform to our buildings, but our buildings must conform to our lives. They must express not only our culture and our tastes, but the land in which we live and the environment in which we are placed. This can never be accomplished by erecting buildings for their exterior only, and until our architects learn to treat the plan and disposition of the building as the chief part of the structure we can never hope to be rid of the discomfort that makes so much of our daily life unbearable. The Gothic builders achieved success, not because their buildings were beautiful only, but because they filled every natural requirement. It is impossible to delude ourselves with the thought that we are equally successful simply because we happen to live in a house with a Gothic front, but which subjects us to hourly annoyances by the total absence of the conveniences and necessaries of modern daily life.

said Prof. Marshall Ward, in the British Association, ought to he taught in schools because of the interest which the subject arouses in the mind of a child and the ease with which it can be taught. The study cultivates and stimulates those powers of accurate observation and comparison and conscientious recording of results so much needed by all, and which come naturally to children who are not too much under the bane of a mere instruction system. The value of such teaching is not to be measured by the number and kind of facts remembered, any more than historical knowledge consists of being able to remember the dates of battles and other events. The elements of botany afford to the teacher the cheapest, the cleanest, and the most convenient means of cultivating in young children the power of observation and comparison direct with nature, and afterward teaching them to generalize.