10 SKETCHES BY A PRACTISING ARCHITECT. 



leums, without estimates, specifications, and working 

 details ! — without having to insure foundations, either 

 of rock or money — without having to employ lawyers 

 in the provision of agreements, bonds, and securities 

 — without any vulgar cares, concerning settlements, 

 failures, or arbitrations between contractors and 

 proprietors — without having to pay five shillings a- 

 foot for ground, or any regard towards the subject 

 of smoky chimneys, thorough-draughts, and dry rot ! 

 There, the delights of criticism — of not only finding 

 faults, but of proposing remedies — of sweeping down 

 St. Peter's Church, for instance ; and of building a 

 new "Basilica Vaticana," after the same manner, 

 and with as little trouble, as a physician would 

 exemplify in writing a prescription for the heart-bum. 



The following is an exampte of the grand scale 

 and ofF-hand manner, in which amateurship conducts 

 its works. The author speaks (and rightly speaks) 

 of certain defects in St. Peter's : — but perhaps his 

 own words had better be employed. 



" Now, St. Peter's, though confessedly the first 

 modern pile in the world ; and though a great genius 

 presided at its erection, occupied the reigns of eighteen 

 pontiffs. Its most striking feature, though consider- 

 ably altered for the worse, is stolen from the Pan- 

 theon. The general drift of the original design, chalked 

 out by Michael Angelo, has indeed been followed, 

 deteriorated however by the patch-work of succeeding 

 artists. The arcades are too colossal — the inlaid 

 marbles in small pieces do not correspond with the 

 grandeur of the fabric — the walled part of Bernini's 

 peristyle is superfluous — the grand front is positively 

 bad. A consideration of the defects of this colossal 

 pile gave rise to the following architectural lucubra- 

 tion, in a walk one evening under the colonnade of 

 Bernini. 



" Strike a circle; let the circumference bisect 

 twenty columns, with the equi-distance of the diastyle 

 intercolumniation ; take any intercolumniation, call it 

 the eastern. From the centre of the rotunda, extend 



