But in this, as in everything else, there must be an aim, and one persisted in, else no experience is gained. A mere succession of generations will do nothing, if for each of them the whole problem is changed. The man of to-day cannot profit by his father's experience in the building of his house, if his culture, his habits, his associates, are different from his father's,--much less if they have changed since his own youth, and are changing from year to year. He will not imitate, he will not forbear to alter. On such shifting sands no enduring structure is possible, but only a tent for the night.
We talk of the laws of architecture; but the fundamental law of all, and one that is sure to be obeyed, is, that the dwelling shall typify man's appropriation of the earth and its products,--what we call property. A man's house is naturally just as fixed a quantity as the kind and the amount of his possessions, and no more so. The style of it, depending on the inherited ideas of the class to which he belongs, will be as formed and as fixed as that class. Then where there is no fixed class, and where the property of every man is constantly varying, our quantity will be just so variable, and the true type of our architecture will be the tent,--of the frame-and-clapboard variety suited to the climate.
For good architecture, then, we need castes in society, and fixed ways of living. We see the effect in the old parsonages in England, where from year to year have dwelt men of the same class, education, income, tastes, and circumstances generally, and so bringing from generation to generation nearly the same requirements, with the unessential changes brought in from time to time by new wants or individual fancies, here and there putting out a bay-window or adding a wing, but always in the spirit of the original building, and the whole getting each year more weather-stained and ivy-grown, and so toned into more complete harmony with the landscape, yet still living and expansive.
It may be said that the result is here a partly accidental one, and not a matter of art. But domestic architecture is only half-way a fine art. It does not aim at a beauty of the monumental kind, as a statue, a triumphal arch, or even a temple does. Its primary aim is shelter, to house man in nature,--and it forms, as it were, the connecting link between him and the outward world. Its results, therefore, are partly the free artistic production, and partly retain unmodified their material character. In the image carved by the sculptor, the stone or wood used derive little of their effect from the original material; the important character is that imparted to them by his skill. Still more the canvas and pigments of the painter. But in architecture the wood and stone still fulfil the offices of covering, connecting, and supporting, as they did in the tree and the quarry, and their physical properties play an essential part in the work. The house, therefore, is a work of art only half emancipated from nature, and must depend on nature for much of its beauty also. It must not be isolated, as something merely to be looked at, apart from its position and its material use.