1859.] on Modern Gothic Architecture. 33 



* and pomix)us monuments, and filled not Europe only, but Asia and 



* Africa also, with mountains of stone, vast and gigantic buildings 



* indeed, but not worthy of the name of architecture, congestions of 



* dark, heavy, melancholy, and monkish piles, [Lord Palmerston's view 

 *of Gothic almost verbatim] without any just proportion, use, or 



* beauty, compared with the truly antient ; so as, when we meet with 



* the greatest industry and expensive carving, full of fret and lament- 



* able imagery, sparing neither of pains nor cost, a judicious spectator 



* is rather distracted or quite confounded than touched with that admi- 



* ration which results from the true and just sympathy, regular propor- 



* tions, union, and disposition, and from the great and noble manner in 



* which the august and glorious fabrics of the antients were executed ;* 

 with more nonsense of the same kind, to which other similar nonsense 

 from other writers of the two last centuries might easily be added. 



Besides adopting this enlightened view of the nature of Gothic 

 building, Lord Palmerston has been kind enough to furnish us with 

 a few tolerably conclusive measures of his own architectural taste and 

 knowledge of the business he has been talking about. First of all it 

 appears, that " Pall Mall, with all its magnificent clubs, each one 

 handsomer than the other " (whatever that piece of oratory means) is 

 his ideal of "a street of palaces ;" such as he would like to see extended 

 from the end of Whitehall to the precincts of the Abbey. Then, as 

 for the Abbey itself, he has no hesitation in pronouncing that (he does 

 not say whether he means Sir Christopher Wren's monstrifications of 

 it, or the original work— perhaps he would be rather puzzled to dis- 

 tinguish them) quite inferior to St. Paul's. And by way of a light 

 and gheerful model for a set of Government Offices, with no dark 

 passages, and windows adapted for letting in the utmost quantity of 

 light, and a refined and lively style of decoration, Somerset House 

 is the thing; "he will venture to say that is much handsomer than 

 the Houses of Parliament." As there is no resemblance between 

 the style of the Houses of Parliament and any of the prize Gothic 

 plans for the Foreign Office, that comparison, at any rate, is not 

 much to the purpose. Indeed, it is only fair to Sir Charles Barry 

 to remember, that the style prescribed for his building was the latest 

 and worst of all t)ie Gothic styles ; and moreover, that it was designed 

 nearly a quarter of a century ago, almost in the infancy of the Gothic 

 revival, when there was scarcely anything designed which its authors 

 would not be ashamed of now. The comparison between the two 

 metropolitan cathedrals, even if Lord Palmerston's opinion of them 

 was generally agreed with, is of a still less practical character, inas- 

 much as the architects are neither of them likely to be candidates 

 for employment on the New Offices. If they were, I am inclined to 

 think that very few people, except Lord Palmerston, Mr. Coningham, 

 and Mr. Tite, would hesitate about calling up the unknown builders 

 of the Abbey, or any of our old cathedrals, in preference to the 

 architect of St. Paul's, Temple Bar, and St. James's, in Piccadilly, or 

 even to Sir William Chambers, of Somerset House. 



The two architectural potentates of the late G overnment seem to 

 Vol. III. (No. 29.) d 



