opinion as to the just share and proportion is to be referred to an impartial arbitrator.  All the owners will gain, though some a little more than others.  That is an example that we may do well to try and follow, and in some way or other improve the money value, and social value, and hygienic value of towns, and if necessary compel the carrying out of improvements when some few might be disposed to hold out against them.

[Page:  130] WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS

From PROF.  BALDWIN BROWN (Professor of Fine Art in the University of
Edinburgh)

I am glad of this opportunity of saying how cordially I agree with the method adopted by my friend Professor Geddes in dealing with the life of cities.  He treats the modern community and its material shell as things of organic growth, with a past and a future as well as a present, whereas we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour of some exigency of the moment.  A historic British town has recently furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection.  The town possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at a time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great Britain.  Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing a site for a new elementary school.  No doubt, in that school, books “approved by the Department” will instruct scholars in the past history of the burgh, but the living witness of that history must first of all be carefully obliterated.  All the rest of this ancient and historic enceinte was condemned a few weeks ago to complete destruction, merely on the plea that the site would be convenient for workmen’s dwellings.  The monument has now been saved, but it has taken the whole country to do it!

Here were chosen officials, governors of no mean city, absolutely oblivious of these important interests committed to their care, and all for want of having drilled into them these broader views which Professor Geddes puts forward so well.

He has himself done practical work in Edinburgh on the lines he lays down, and I have lately had occasion to note, and call attention to the advantage to the city of much wise conservatism in regard to our older buildings which he and his associates have shown.

In Edinburgh we have the advantage that our older monuments, [Page:  131] in which so much of the past life of the city is enshrined, are firm and solid; and it takes some trouble to knock them down.  Hence for some time to come we shall preserve here object-lessons in civic development that will be of interest to the country at large.

From MR. WALTER CRANE (President of Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society)