642 Mr. M. B. S;pielmann [May 13, 



architectonic screen on the Capitoline Hill, by Signor Sacconi, was 

 begun in 1884, and was estimated to cost 360,000Z. ; but, by 1898, 

 1,040,000Z. had been spent, and by the time it is finished, with its 

 colossal equestrian by Signor Chiaradia, its vast halls, terraces, etc., 

 not less a sum than 2,000,000Z. will have been expended — the tribute 

 of impoverished Italy to her great King ; while to our greater Queen, 

 wealthy England has as yet subscribed but one-eighth of that 

 amount. 



With these works before our eyes, and the details of cost and 

 periods of construction, we should be in a better position to form a 

 fair judgment of what the Queen Victoria Memorial is to be. The 

 conditions of the competition were verbal and necessarily vague, and 

 wide enough to avoid hampering the architects ; and as the amount 

 that would be subscribed could not be known, no estimate or limit of 

 cost could be suggested. A plan of the Mall was provided ; a 

 suggestion was made as to the designing of a Processional Eoad, 

 opening out at the eastern end, with an architectural setting for the 

 monument and with a necessary laying out of the ground on the west, 

 with the further statement that Mr. Brock would design the monu- 

 ment, to which the architectural structures in the west would 

 necessarily be subordinate. Mr. Brock met the architects in council, 

 and explained his ideas by the rough model he has made. 



In July 1901 the announcement of Mr. Aston Webb's success 

 was made, and a public exhibition of the various designs was held in 

 St. James's Palace. In view of the great skill and eminence of each 

 competing architect, much was to be said for each individual design, 

 but there is little doubt that the general feeling has cordially 

 endorsed the finding of the Committee and the approval of the King. 



[These designs were next considered — that of Mr. T. G. Jackson, 

 with its noble and imposing triumphal arch, its central allee, and its 

 colonnaded forecourt ; that of Mr. Ernest George, with its beautiful 

 five-way gate-way, and its original elongated parterre and fountains 

 east and west, its grouped columns, and semi-circular screen ; that 

 of Sir Thomas Drew, with its re-alignment of the Mall, with its fore- 

 court of stately buildings on the east, its triumphal arch, and particu- 

 larly the reconstructed face of Buckingham Palace (which detail by 

 itself would cost from 100,000/. to 120,000Z.) ; that of Sir Eowand 

 Anderson, with its great archway at the eastern end, and the elabo- 

 rate design for the statue itself at the west, at the centre of a semi- 

 circular plateau — all were passed in review, in elevation and plan. 

 In respect to the two last-mentioned architects, it was pointed out 

 that neither the refacing of the palace, nor the designing of the statue, 

 came within the scope of the competition.] 



The design of Mr. Aston Webb has been held to comprise the 

 greatest number of the best and most practical ideas ; with the fine 

 and eminently practical opening to the east, with good vistas, and 

 a general symmetrical design and ensemble, relatively modest, and 

 well calculated to be a setting to the monument and not unduly to 



