ABSTRACT
I do not suggest that there is, in itself, anything modern about the use of non-local stones for building. At all times choice stones have travelled to the sites of important buildings; and even inferior stones to regions which possess no rocks that supply masonry. It is a matter of degree, and of a consequent degree in change of attitude. Before transport became so easy, local stone usages were in far greater evidence: the respect for stone as a material of a particular character was widespread, strengthening the background before which national, and even international, architects worked. There was less of the modern moulding attitude to architectural design, and vastly more tradition in the employment of each kind of stone. Many million jerry-built, or semijerry-built, dwellings do not tend to heighten the nonplastic architectural sense. These dwellings are moulded like cheap tea-cups: the use of brick ceases to be any kind of substitute for stone. And if this has always been true to some extent of town architecture, it is a hundred times more true in the hey-day of science and machinery.
