.1859/] on Modern Gothic Architecture. 53 



quarter- chimes instead, which are far more useful and did not exist 

 before. Of course all this is sent up by some local malcontent, 

 like the paragraph which has been going round the newspapers about 

 the impossibility of hearing in the church ; where any man with a 

 good voice can be heard perfectly, not merely from the middle where 

 the pulpit is, but from one end of the church to the other, 169 feet; 

 and some eminent singers have pronounced it a singularly good place 

 for sound, as is also proved by the surprising effect of a small tempo- 

 rary organ, now in the corner of the church farthest from the congre- 

 gation. So much for the power of criticism of the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, exhibited upon that building. Of the 

 other new church, St. James's, all that they can find to say is, 

 that such a church has been built, " but it is a comparatively plain 

 MructureP I think we need spend no more time in considering the 

 value of this, the only annual commentary on the progress of archi- 

 tecture in England. 



I am aware that it is becoming a fashion among the second- rate 

 architects to say that there is only too much criticism, and too much 

 interference by " meddling wiseacres," who will never let the cultivated 

 taste and true genius of the professional architects have a fair scope 

 for action. No doubt it is a very pleasant theory that the business of 

 amateur architects is to find money and praise for the professional 

 ones ; but it is a little too one-sided to have much chance of being 

 adopted by those whose C9nsent is essential to its success ; and so I 

 shall not stop to argue about that. But if it be true, as these non- 

 interference gentlemen would have you believe, that their failures are 

 due to us, and their successes to themselves, nothing can be easier than 

 to prove it and have done with it. Why don't they say, " Here is such 

 a building : these were my drawings for it, but Mr. Denison, or Mr. 

 Somebody else, would insist upon altering them in this way, and now 

 you see how it is spoilt?" If they did that, and showed that any 

 considerable number of buildings really are spoilt by interference of that 

 kind, they would prove thgir case, and we should have very little to say 

 for ourselves. But unless they can, they had far better have held their 

 peace than ventured upon this singularly perilous defence. For if 

 they will drive us to try that issue, which of their works will they 

 select to try it by ? Indeed the proportion of cases in which their 

 plans are altered or interfered with is so small, that even if the inter- 

 ference always made them worse, still the general character of modern 

 architecture would not be sensibly affected by it. But small as that 

 proportion is, will any architect venture to say that those buildings are 

 worse than the many in which they have entirely their own way, 

 sometimes with as little restriction on the cost as the design ? If inter- 

 ference is fatal to success, it is tolerably notorious that the two 

 churches whose pictures are behind me ought to be the greatest of 

 modern failures. But I do not want to press this point, because it is 

 impossible to say all that might easily be said upon it without involv- 

 ing the better class of architects (who, as far as I have seen, do not 

 join in this foolish outcry against the amateurs) in the folly of the bad 



