Well, I have spoken of three qualifications to that degradation of our dwellings which characterises this period of history only.

First, there are the very few houses which have been left us from the times of art.  Except that we may sometimes have the pleasure of seeing these, we most of us have little enough to do with them.

Secondly, there are those houses of the times when, though art was sick and all but dead, men had not quite given it up as a bad job, and at any rate had not learned systematic bad building; and when, moreover, they had what they wanted, and their lives were expressed by their architecture.  Of these there are still left a good many all over the country, but they are lessening fast before the irresistible force of competition, and will soon be very rare indeed.

Thirdly, there are a few houses built and mostly inhabited by the ringleaders of the rebellion against sordid ugliness, which we are met here to further to-night.  It is clear that as yet these are very few,—­or you could never have thought it worth your while to come here to hear the simple words I have to say to you on this subject.

Now, these are the exceptions.  The rest is what really amounts to the dwellings of all our people, which are built without any hope of beauty or care for it—­without any thought that there can be any pleasure in the look of an ordinary dwelling-house, and also (in consequence of this neglect of manliness) with scarce any heed to real convenience.  It will, I hope, one day be hard to believe that such houses were built for a people not lacking in honesty, in independence of life, in elevation of thought, and consideration for others; not a whit of all that do they express, but rather hypocrisy, flunkeyism, and careless selfishness.  The fact is, they are no longer part of our lives.  We have given it up as a bad job.  We are heedless if our houses express nothing of us but the very worst side of our character both national and personal.

This unmanly heedlessness, so injurious to civilisation, so unjust to those that are to follow us, is the very thing we want to shake people out of.  We want to make them think about their homes, to take the trouble to turn them into dwellings fit for people free in mind and body—­much might come of that I think.

Now, to my mind, the first step towards this end is, to follow the fashion of our nation, so often, so very often, called practical, and leaving for a little an ideal scarce conceivable, to try to get people to bethink them of what we can best do with those makeshifts which we cannot get rid of all at once.