DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29898#0017
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EHITION.
Although the present work may in some respects be consiclered as
only a new edition of the £ Handbook of Architecture,’ still the alter-
ations, both in substance and in form, have been so extensive as to
render the adoption of a new title almost indispensable. The topo-
graphical arrangement, which was the basis of the ‘ Handbook,’ has
been abandoned, and a historical sequence introduced in its place.
This has entirely altered the argument of the book, and, with the
changes and additions which it has involved, has rendered it prac-
tically a new work ; containing, it is true, all that was included in
the previous publication, but with a great deal that is new and little
that retains its original form.
The logical reasons for these changes will be set forth in their
proper place in the body of the work ; but meanwhile, as the Preface
is that part of it which should properly include all personal explana-
tions, I trust I may not be considered as laying myself open to a
charge of egotism, if I avail myself of this conventional licence in
explaining the steps by which this work attained its present form.
It was my good fortune to be able to devote many years of my
life to the study of Architecture—as a fine art—under singularly
favourable circumstances : not only was I able to extend my personal
observations to the examples found in almost all the countries be-
tween China and the Atlantic shore, but I lived familiarly among
a people who were still practising their traditional art on the same
principles as those which guided the architects of the Middle Ages in
the production of similar but scarcely more beautiful or more original
works. With these antecedents, I found myself in possession of a
considerable amount of infoi’mation regarding buildings which had
not previously been described, and—what I considered of more value
—of an insight into the theory of the art, which was certainly even
more novel.
Believing this knowledge and these principles to be of sufficient
importance to justify me in so doing, I resolved on publishing a work
Although the present work may in some respects be consiclered as
only a new edition of the £ Handbook of Architecture,’ still the alter-
ations, both in substance and in form, have been so extensive as to
render the adoption of a new title almost indispensable. The topo-
graphical arrangement, which was the basis of the ‘ Handbook,’ has
been abandoned, and a historical sequence introduced in its place.
This has entirely altered the argument of the book, and, with the
changes and additions which it has involved, has rendered it prac-
tically a new work ; containing, it is true, all that was included in
the previous publication, but with a great deal that is new and little
that retains its original form.
The logical reasons for these changes will be set forth in their
proper place in the body of the work ; but meanwhile, as the Preface
is that part of it which should properly include all personal explana-
tions, I trust I may not be considered as laying myself open to a
charge of egotism, if I avail myself of this conventional licence in
explaining the steps by which this work attained its present form.
It was my good fortune to be able to devote many years of my
life to the study of Architecture—as a fine art—under singularly
favourable circumstances : not only was I able to extend my personal
observations to the examples found in almost all the countries be-
tween China and the Atlantic shore, but I lived familiarly among
a people who were still practising their traditional art on the same
principles as those which guided the architects of the Middle Ages in
the production of similar but scarcely more beautiful or more original
works. With these antecedents, I found myself in possession of a
considerable amount of infoi’mation regarding buildings which had
not previously been described, and—what I considered of more value
—of an insight into the theory of the art, which was certainly even
more novel.
Believing this knowledge and these principles to be of sufficient
importance to justify me in so doing, I resolved on publishing a work