PREFACE. 



Another year has been acUled to our labours, and it is again a pleasant duty to lay before our readers a brief account of the progress 

 of the two professions, to the service of which we are devoted. It will naturally be expected that in a year of severe financial embarrass- 

 ment, succeeding also to one so fertile in important resvdts as was the last, there nuist necessarily be a falling olfin tlic amount of what 

 would otherwise have been eftticted, and a delay in the execution of many works, the completion of which is thereby retarded. Our own 

 exertions, however, we have not suffered to flag under circumstances so dispiriting, but trust that so far as has depended on us, the present 

 volume is worthy of its predecessor, and of the patronage with which our endeavours have been crowned. 



In considering the general features of architecture, we find that the invasion of tlie Renaissa)ice style, wliich we announced last year, 

 has actually occurred, but has singularly been accompanied with, or rather smothered by, a resuscitated taste for Eli,!abethan external and 

 internal deebraticn. Considerable attention hiis also been devoted to the early antitpiities of Moresque architecture. Our own ecclesias- 

 tical antiquities, we are happy to mention with praise, have been chosen as the special object of enquiry by a Society of Clergymen at 

 Oxford, and thus we are led to hope for an improvement in taste, in a qu.u'ter which hitherto has had but too great a part in producing 

 the present degeneracy. 



A striking and interesting circumstance to every well wisher of the arts, is the great zeal with which both associated bodies and 

 individual members of the profession have engaged in the struggle for maintaining the true principles of competition. Among these 

 cases have been the Nelson Testimonial, St. George's Hall Liverpool, and the Royal Exchange, in the still pending contest respecting 

 which latter, we believe we may say with truth, " Quorum pars maxuma fui." On learning the extraordinary attempt to impose a tax of a 

 guinea on applicants, for copies of the Instructions of the Committee, we immediately obtained copies both of the instructions and the 

 plans, and left them at our office for the free use of any ajjplicant— a course of conduct for which we feel an abundant reward, in the vote 

 of thanks unanimously bestowed on us by the Manchester Architectural Society. From these exertions hitherto, no immediate fruit has 

 resulted, but much has been already attained from the influence which they have had in awakening the public mind from its lethargy, and 

 calling its power to a subject so importantly affecting the national glory and the general taste. 



Great progress has been made this year in bringing the accessary science of geology to bear upon architectural pursuits, and with a 

 success which must have an influence on the future progress of each respectively. Government issued a commission, composed of 

 geologists and architects, to examine the quarries of England, for the purpose of ascertaining the stone best fitted for the construction of 

 the new Houses of Parliament. This commission has produced a report which must lung be a standard of information to the profession, 

 and a valuable model in future enquiries. The Goverment has also formed a Museum of Economic Geology, attached to the deijartment 

 of Woods and Forests, in which the commissioners specimens are collected, and to which future accessions will be made. Special courses 

 of lectures on the connection of these two subjects have been delivered by eminent geologists : at the Royal Institute of British Architects 

 by G. F. Richardson, (reported in our Journal), and at the Architectural Society, by E. W. Brayley, jun. Great attention is also paid to 

 these subjects in the several faculties of civil engineering. Although not yet brought into immediate connection with architecture, we 

 feel it our duty to allude to the discoveries in photograpy by Daguerre and Fox Talbot, and to those in engraving by voltaic electricity 

 made at Liverpool. In the British Museum great improvements have been eft'ected, and a Museum of Antiquities has been formed by 

 the city authorities, in Guildhall. We regret, however, that the Soane Museum, the proper Museum of Architecture, as yet manifests 

 no progress. The elementary drawing and professional schools throughout the country have exhibited a remarkable improvement, as 

 have the schools of design, and the class of decorative artists appears to have attained a higher standard than it ever before reached. An 

 act has been (lassed for giving protection to the copyright of manufacturing deeigns, and it is to be hoped that this symptom of a better 

 system of legislation for art, may be pursued successfully. We may mention here as another legislative act, although not in perfect 

 regularity, that an amendment has been made in the Brick Duties Act. 



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