American School of Architecture, Rome.

A recent circular issued by the committee of the American School of Architecture at Rome contains a general description of the organization of the school and its work. On the twelfth of last June, at a meeting held in New York, it was decided to found such a school, and a committee of control was selected including the chiefs of the schools of architecture at the different American colleges where such exist. We give below some quotations from this circular which will be found of interest.

The school is founded for the benefit of advanced students only, and is designed to further the more disciplinary work of other institutions by opening to young men, already well trained by them in drawing and design, certain special lines of study, which at present can be pursued only under great disadvantages. Beginners, accordingly, will not be received. Such work is not suitable to their condition, and it would be a mistake to encourage them to devote their time to it. But to the holders of traveling scholarships, to those who have acquitted themselves with distinction in the competitions for these scholarships, and to members of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of at least three years' standing, it offers opportunities for the completion of their professional training which students thus equipped will, it is believed, find of inestimable value. Other well-accredited students may be admitted to certain hospitalities of the school, at the discretion of the secretary.

Hitherto the holders of traveling scholarships have followed very largely their own judgment as to their travel and study, and have produced, as required, a certain number of carefully measured drawings, which have borne testimony to the diligence of their authors, their facility with pen, pencil, and brush, and the evident seriousness of their intentions; but the work has necessarily shown no common purpose and little consistent prosecution along carefully chosen lines. This being their common experience, the past holders of traveling scholarships are general in their approval of the effort to direct foreign travel and study hereafter to more definite and specific courses.

The school is one of observation and research rather than of design, aiming to form a correct taste and to impress upon the mind, by daily contact with great examples, those principles which are essential to the enduring quality in architecture, be the style what it may. To this end the founders of the school believe it to be of the utmost importance for an architect, before he begins his professional career, to study thoroughly and on the spot the monuments of ancient architecture and such works of the Italian Renaissance as are worthy of being considered their successors. The monuments best suited to this purpose are those of Greece and Italy, and the headquarters of the school are established at Rome rather than at Athens, because of the greater amount of material there at hand of use to the modern student not only in the art of architecture itself, but in that of mural painting and in the decorative arts, including architectural sculpture.

The school was formally opened under the charge of Mr. Austin W. Lord, as secretary, on the first of November last, in temporary quarters in the upper story of the Palazzo Torlonia, on the southwest corner of the Via dei Condotti and the Via Bocca di Leone, between the Corso and the Piazza di Spagna; but a permanent home has now been secured in the building known as the Casino dell'Aurora, occupying a part of the grounds formerly belonging to the Villa Ludovisi. This building is situated upon an isolated plot of ground, raised fifteen or twenty feet above the surrounding streets, and comprising about eighty thousand square feet, which is the size of the enclosed space in Gramercy Park in the city of New York. It is on the Pincian Hill, not far from the French Academy in the Villa Medici. The building contains about thirty rooms; some of these are decorated with well-known frescoes, among which is the Aurora of Guercino. The grounds, which were laid out by Lenôtre, are well covered with trees and shrubs, and afford ample space for the erection of additional one story buildings, should such be required at any time for workrooms or studios.