Now to the matter. As the New York Post reports, the California road commissioners, whom they call Caltrans, announced on Friday, the seventeenth day before the Kalends of November, that workers at Thornhill Broome Beach in the district of Malibu, north of Sycamore Canyon Road, are piling up huge rocks where part of the road known as Highway 1 was torn away in the latest storm; earth and boulders are being moved by digging and pushing machines. The road patrol likewise warned that high tides are hindering travel at the same spot, and that traffic patterns have been changed. Further, in Orange County, near El Morro above Laguna Beach, the cliff beneath the road is said to gape with a great crack; for this reason Caltrans has closed one southbound lane between Irvine Cove and Reef Point Drive. Christianne Smith, the commissioners' spokeswoman, as the LA Times reports, told travellers to follow the signs for the safety of travellers and workers. And the state of California, fearing the winter they call El Niño, has declared a state of emergency before the storms; when the road at Malibu will be restored, the officials have not yet said.

First, then, we must consider what I have laid down for every work: "These things must be so done that account is taken of soundness, usefulness and beauty." Soundness, however, lies not in the road surface, nor in rocks laid on top, but in the foundation. Foundations, where it can be done, must be dug down to the solid and into the solid; where the solid is not found, the site must be made firm with piles, charcoal and sure masonry. Caltrans calls this kind of defence long-term protection; yet the reports do not say whether these rocks are set on living bedrock or merely heaped on the sand of the beach. An architect would ask this first, for a rock that is not held fast the sea itself moves, and what the sea moves it soon flings back onto the road.

Next, the cliff at Laguna Beach shows where the fault lies. It is not the road that gives way, but the earth that carries the road; the waves eat at the foot of the cliff, and once the foot is eaten away, all above it hangs. Whoever repairs the road and neglects the cliff repairs the roof and never looks at the wall. Nor is the Ocean a new or unforeseen enemy: the state itself, by declaring an emergency before winter, confesses that it knew the danger in advance. What is known every year is not an emergency; it is negligence, diligently repeated.

Of usefulness and cost something must also be said. The reports give neither the cost of the work nor a date for its end. I remember the Ephesian law: "In the noble and great Greek city of Ephesus an ancient law is said to have been established by the ancestors, harsh in its terms but not unjust." There the architect declared the cost in advance and pledged his property; if he exceeded it by more than a quarter, he paid from his own purse. Here, where no cost and no day has been set for the work, the citizens will reclaim every year what the sea seizes every year, and no one will stand surety for the estimate.

The remedy, therefore, is twofold, and not new. Either the works go down to living rock, like the piers of our harbours, built with sunken caissons and Puteolan dust that hardens under water and withstands the waves; or, where rock is wanting, the road draws back from the edge, as Hostilius moved Salpia from the marsh. The third course, to heap rocks on the beach and wait for winter, is not an architect's work but a vow made to Neptune. For the sea is not beaten by a heap, but by a foundation or by retreat.