IT is always interesting to note the early impressions which the superficial aspect of our country produces on foreigners who visit it for the first time, and to compare those impressions with feelings such as we have ourselves experienced under similar conditions on the Continent. Making every allowance for the charm of novelty, which of course goes far to enhance a stranger's enjoyment on these occasions, we cannot doubt that there is much in the external appearance of foreign life which possesses especial attractions for our countrymen. The first glimpse, for instance, which we get, after crossing the Channel, of such a town as Dieppe, or the gratification which we derive from wandering for the first time through the streets of a city like Nuremburg, whose general aspect has remained almost unaltered since the Middle Ages, is associated with a sense of what may be called eye-pleasure, which is utterly absent in our English provincial towns. The latter may be better paved, cleaner swept, and more expensively laid out than their French or German rivals; but they are for the most part utterly wanting in one important element of architectural merit - viz., the picturesque. When we pass on to compare the capital of France with our own metropolis, a still wider difference is discernible, though from causes of another kind. Modern Paris is fast losing - if, indeed, it has not quite lost - the romantic interest which once attached to its genius loci. The quaint irregularly-built streets, the overhanging corbelled stories and high-pitched gable-fronts which rise before us as we read 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame,' and which lingered down to the days of Smollett, and even to our own time, have suddenly disappeared before the rapid and extensive improvements which are carried on under the present Government.

Street in Nuremburg.

Anyone who has traced on an old map of Paris the labyrinth of dark and narrow streets through which the Rue de Rivoli has boldly cut, or who can remember the former aspect of those quarters now intersected by the Boulevart Sebastopol, and other thoroughfares, will bear witness to the almost magical effect of a transformation which the social economist or the sanitary commissioner indeed may view with satisfaction, but which the artist and antiquarian cannot but deplore. The architecture of modern Paris is by no means all that a man of sound taste can approve. It is cold and formal in general effect. In detail it is somewhat garish, but more often simply uninteresting. The long unbroken line of cornice, window-range, or parapet, which presents itself to the eye in interminable perspective, becomes wearisome even in the widest and loftiest of streets. Yet, right or wrong, there is a uniformity of purpose, a character and completeness about the work, which not only bears the impress of a national taste, but exhibits the influence of some direct and competent supervision. Unfortunately in England we can boast of no national taste in architecture, and the scheme on which our Executive Government is based, prevents anything like State interference regarding the design of buildings devoted to private enterprise or occupation. So every householder or merchant builds according to his own fancy, or rather, according to the fancy of the professional gentleman whom he employs to plan his villa or his warehouse. Of course I am now alluding to the best structures of each class. As for the myriads of cockney cottages, suburban streets, tawdry shop-fronts, and stuccoed terraces, which are rising up in the outskirts of London, they speak for themselves; and as long as people of humble means will insist on assuming the semblance of luxuries which they cannot really afford, vulgarities of design and structural deceits must prevail in this direction. But where there is no stint of means - where the work, if done at all, should, and might easily be done well, and where, under these conditions, we find taste neglected, and money thrown away, the result is indeed melancholy to contemplate. Perhaps the most consistent phase of modern street architecture in London is that which has appeared in connection with the West-end clubs. Yet these, as a rule, are but copies, and, not unfrequently, vitiated copies, of actual buildings illustrating a school of art which had never a footing in England until we had lost or degraded our own. The' so-called Italian style - now understood to include every variety of Renaissance design which prevailed in Rome, Venice, and Florence, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century - has its aesthetic merits and its practical advantages. But they are merits and advantages which are unsuited to the age, to the climate, and to the country in which they are reproduced. It does not require the judgment of an accomplished connoisseur to perceive that mouldings and carved enrichments which look well under the glowing effect of a Venetian sky, must appear tame and spiritless through the leaden atmosphere of London. We want in England a less refined and more nervous expression of architectural beauty - bold and sturdy features, which will hold their own against wind and rain, and defy the smoke and traffic of our busy coal-burning towns. But it is not often that we can complain with any reason of undue refinement in our imitations of Italian architecture. Even those which are confessedly copied from old examples miss, either intentionally or through inaccurate workmanship, the delicacy of the original design. And, in too many instances, where our architects have ignored the value of precedent and struck out in a new line for themselves, the result has been hopelessly clumsy or bizarre. It is only by a long and careful course of study, based on a naturally good and inventive taste, that these mistakes can be avoided on the part of the designer. And it is only by the well-directed and long-sustained efforts of designers that the British public will ever be brought to distinguish good from bad in modern architecture. Ignorant amateurs of the art may be divided into two classes - those who have a smattering of book lore on the subject, and who think no building worth looking at which is not based on 'authority,' or, in other words, which is not copied from some existing work; and those who have a morbid craving after novelty at the expense of every other consideration, including that invaluable standard of architectural fitness which is supplied by ordinary reason. It is to the first of these two classes that we are indebted for the encouragement and support of the pseudo-classicism with which, in the form of churches, clubs, and public institutions, London was deluged in the early part of this century. The tide of public favour has since turned in an opposite direction; and while all must admit the laudable zeal with which Pugin and his followers endeavoured to revive old English architecture in this country, it is lamentable to reflect how many architects there are at present who perpetrate, under the general name of Gothic, monstrous designs which neither in spirit nor letter realise the character of mediaeval art. In London these extraordinary ebullitions of uneducated taste generally appear in the form of meetinghouses, music-halls, and similar places of popular resort. Showy in their general effect, and usually overloaded with meretricious ornament, they are likely enough to impose upon an uninformed judgment, which is incapable of discriminating between what Mr. Ruskin has called the Lamp of Sacrifice - one of the glories of ancient art - and the lust of profusion which is the bane of modern design. These extravagances are not confined to a perversion of Gothic. Some of the 'Monster ' hotels, railway stations, and other buildings of a type unknown to our forefathers, but now erected in London, are decorated after a fashion which is equally novel, and which has nothing but novelty to recommend it. But then most of these buildings are six or seven stories high, make up so many hundred beds, and are managed by a host who is so important a personage that we never see him at all! These facts, doubtless, enhance our respect for an establishment which, on a smaller scale, might be open to some criticism on the ground both of personal convenience and of artistic propriety.