7. Again, in a climate like ours, those few who have knowledge and
feeling to distinguish what is beautiful, are frequently prevented by
various circumstances from erecting it. John Bull's comfort perpetually
interferes with his good taste, and I should be the first to lament his
losing so much of his nationality, as to permit the latter to prevail.
He cannot put his windows into a recess, without darkening his rooms; he
cannot raise a narrow gable above his walls, without knocking his head
against the rafters; and, worst of all, he cannot do either, without
being stigmatized by the awful, inevitable epithet, of "a very odd man."
But, though much of the degradation of our present school of
architecture is owing to the want or the unfitness of patrons, surely it
is yet more attributable to a lamentable deficiency of taste and talent
among our architects themselves. It is true, that in a country affording
so little encouragement, and presenting so many causes for its absence,
it cannot be expected that we should have any Michael Angelo
Buonarottis. The energy of our architects is expended in raising "neat"
poor-houses, and "pretty" charity schools; and, if they ever enter upon
a work of higher rank, economy is the order of the day: plaster and
stucco are substituted for granite and marble; rods of splashed iron for
columns of verd-antique; and in the wild struggle after novelty, the
fantastic is mistaken for the graceful, the complicated for the
imposing, superfluity of ornament for beauty, and its total absence for
simplicity.

8. But all these disadvantages might in some degree be counteracted, all
these abuses in some degree prevented, were it not for the slight
attention paid by our architects to that branch of the art which I have
above designated as the Poetry of Architecture. All unity of feeling
(which is the first principle of good taste) is neglected; we see
nothing but incongruous combination: we have pinnacles without height,