At the beginning of the year 1830 there appeared an anonymous publication entitled _Architectural Notes on German Churches, with Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture_. The author need not have tried to conceal his name; in this, as in other similar attempts, his style betrayed his identity at once. The work went through three editions, in each of which it was characteristically altered and enlarged, so that what had appeared as an essay of 118 pages in 1830, was transformed into a work of 348 pages in 1842. Architecture had been from the first one of Whewell’s favourite studies. In a letter to his sister in 1818 he speaks of a visit to Lichfield and Chester for the purpose of studying their cathedrals; many of his subsequent tours were undertaken for similar objects; and his numerous note-books and sketch-books (for he was no mean draughtsman) contain ample evidence of the pains he bestowed on perfecting himself in architectural details. The theory, or ‘ground-idea,’ as his favourite Germans would have called it, which he puts forward, is, that the pointed arch, even if it was really introduced from the East, which he evidently doubts, was improved and developed through the system of vaulting, which the Gothic builders learnt from the Romans. This theory has not been generally accepted; but the mere statement of it may have been of value, as the author suggests, ‘in the way of bringing into view relations and connexions which really exerted a powerful influence on the progress of architecture’; and the sketch of the differences between the classical and the Gothic styles is certainly extremely good. It has been sometimes suggested that the whole book was written in a spirit of rivalry to the _Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages_, by Professor Willis. A glance at the dates of publication is enough to refute this view; for the work of Professor Willis was published in 1835, the first edition of Dr Whewell’s in 1830. In the course of this summer he made an architectural tour with Mr Rickman in Devon and Cornwall; and, as if in order that his occupations might be as sharply contrasted as possible, investigated also the geology of the neighbourhood of Bath.