THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE <i> by John Ruskin (Dover: $8.95, illustrated) </i>

Originally planned as a study of the Gothic style, “The Seven Lamps of Architecture” (1849) emerged as a treatise combining religion, economics, morality and aesthetics. (The “Lamps” in the title represent principles that Ruskin believed were essential to good architecture.) Although his convoluted, Victorian prose may put off modern readers, Ruskin’s arguments remain cogent. Los Angeles circa 1990 would undoubtedly move him to despair. What other city so carelessly violates the tenet of the Lamp of Memory, “There are two duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is impossible to overstate: the first, to render the architecture of the day historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, that of past ages”?