beauty, not because of the imposition of unnecessary features, but because of the natural and reasonable growth of their essential structure.

If, therefore, the ugly character of the present steel-trussed bridge is in itself a proof of the immaturity of the science which has produced it, the remedy, of course, must reside in the perfecting of the science, and this process of perfecting will be quickened, if beauty is recognized in engineering as it is in architecture, as an aim and not as an accident of growth. The architect guides and hastens this progress towards the perfect type by fundamentally composing his structure with a view to an agreeable proportion of its parts; in detail he studies to emphasize the special and important points of his structure by a decorative treatment which shall indicate conventionally the character of the work accomplished at these points. It is true, perhaps, that the structural forms of materials with which the engineers have to work, especially in bridge-building, are hardly so elastic and manageable as those at the command of the architect even in his simplest and most severely practical problems; but it is none the less true that the training of the engineer leads him too often to an absolute disregard, if not contempt, for those refinements of proportion and outline, and for all those delicate adaptations and adjustments of detail, which, though perhaps separately slight, and apparently of small importance, in combination tend to give distinction and a character of fitness and grace to works otherwise, from the point of view of art, rudely immature, basely mechanical, unnecessarily and insolently ugly.

Mr. Henry James says that the French talk of those who see en beau and those who see en laid. The performance-of the modern steel-bridge designers would certainly seem to place them in the latter category. It is no less certain that this result comes not from temperament, which is natural, but from training, which is artificial. The severe and absolute conditions in which the bridge-builders work do not prevent them either from great differences in manner and method of design, or from frequent and unnecessary extravagances of expenditure; but these extravagances are rarely, if ever, lavished in the services of beauty; because the cold and rarefied atmosphere of science and mechanical utility, in which they are accustomed to labor, has gradually frozen out the finer natural instinct which works for art and elegance in design. Beauty of proportion has often been proved by mathematics; but mathematics, when it has been allowed to be the only element in the development of a problem of construction, has never accomplished beautiful results. Such results do not come by accident in any work of design, but by the liberal and generous observance of natural laws. The education, therefore, which from the beginning does not give scone recognition to grace, proportion, elegance, as essential parts of construction, must be misleading and one-sided, and cannot lead  to  perfection.   The  recognition  of these qualities, I am entirely persuaded, does not  necessarily  imply  any  sacrifice  of  practical  accuracy  in  design  or  of