"
The truth runs through all art. There are, alas, so many people who do
not seem to have the faculty of taking pleasure, and there is so much
architecture about our streets which it is impossible to suppose any one
took "pleasure in creating." When a feature is put into a design, not
because the designer liked it, but because it is the usual thing and it
saves trouble, it always proclaims that melancholy truth. But where
something is designed because the designer liked doing it, and was
trying to please his own fancy instead of copying what a hundred other
men have done before, it will go hard but he will give some pleasure to
the spectator. It is from this blessed faculty that a design becomes
inspired with what is best described as "character." It is not the same
thing as style. I have something to say in my next lecture as to what I
think _style_ means, but it is certain that a building may have _style_
and yet want _character_, and it may have a good deal of _character_ and
yet be faulty or contradictory in _style_. We cannot define "character,"
but when we feel that it is present we may rely upon it that it is
because the designer took interest and pleasure in his work, was not
doing it merely scholastically--in short, he put something of his own
character into it, which means that he had some to put.
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