ABSTRACT
In order to succeed in choosing with good taste that which we must imitate and that which we must reject in the works of our predecessors, we have already said, and we repeat it here, students of Architecture must see drawing as the basis of all their work, not in order to become Painters, Sculptors or Decorative Artists themselves, each of the latter Arts requiring that one devote oneself wholly to it, but because in order to be good Architects they must be at least moderately capable of drawing the overall design, the ornamental work, the surrounding landscape, and must know the rules of perspective and the art of modelling if they are to be at the very least capable of assessing correctly the talents of the Artists they must one day associate in work. They should nonetheless be quite convinced that it is also dangerous for them to be in complete ignorance of the Sciences, although they must avoid giving themselves up to that study with an energy and enthusiasm that almost always carries the student beyond the goal he must set himself. For, in the first case, with cold designs deprived of the ornamentation that should embellish them, they will be obliged to hand over their design to other hands, who will often not do them justice, with the result that these beauties, which should be no more than accessories in Architecture, become obstacles to the primordial beauties which form its essence.
