T4 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



LMabcii, 



used, or the sense addressed, that they differ. AVe are now agi- 

 tatiiifj for the catholicity of tlie three arts of design — painting, 

 sculpture, and architecture , hut we cannot expect a perfect de- 

 velopment of the fine arts, unless their three other hranches — 

 music, the drama, and poetry — he likewise cultivated. The attempt 

 to sever single arts, which has failed, is a ground for want of con- 

 fidence in any system which steps short of completeness. In what 

 do all our complaints and all our inquiries as to the low state of 

 art end ? In a conviction of the low mental condition of the pro- 

 fe.ssors of art. When the painter has once taken his hrush in 

 hand, the sculptor his chisel, and the architect his compasses, he 

 hids farewell to education and enlightenment, he gives himself up 

 to what he calls his art, and narrows and cramps his mind just at 

 that time when it should he freest in its expansion. Precisely for 

 the reason that the artist has no education, the scholar has no 

 knowledge of art ; and art is kept hack from this state of affairs, 

 and not from the want of manual capacity in our artists, or of ade- 

 quate encouragement from the public. There have been oppor- 

 tunities enough lately, but they bring forth only Buckingham 

 Palace or Trafalgar Scpiare, art-union pictures or pigtail mon- 

 strosities. The schoolmaster has been sent abroad ; but till our 

 artists are better educated men, and more on a level with those of 

 Greece and Italy, art can have little hope. We do not want 

 academies of art so much as we want schools, liberal training, and 

 the power of reasoning justly. 



Among the six fine or imitative arts, there are marked distinc- 

 tions. Painting or design, sculpture, and architecture are mate- 

 rial in their production ; poetry, the drama, and music are 

 immaterial, and the latter two in their performance are transient 

 or lleeting. The three latter have, however, the power of repro- 

 duction of the model work to such a degree as materially to ex- 

 tend their social influence. Painting by the means of engravings, 

 and sculpture by means of casts, have this power of reproduction 

 in a less or more modified degree, but the progress of science pro- 

 mises to give these arts greater resources; and although some look 

 unfa\oural)ly on the machinery of copying and piracj', we cannot 

 but believe that the ai-tist will gain by being brought into com- 

 munion with a greater mass of the public. The artist and the 

 public must work together, they must feel for each other, they 

 must join to produce the wished effect. Shakspeare working for 

 the public of his day, and Dickens for the public of this, are under 

 a stimulus which the artist at the present time too rarely feels. 

 Tlic incentive to immortality, the conscientious discharge of a 

 patriotic duty, the inspiring influence of the goodwill and fellow 

 feeling of applauding millions ought to operate on the artist as 

 they do on the statesman, the general, or the poet, and ought to 

 produce greater results than the grovelling selfishness which yields 

 up its task on the payment of the stinted and allotted price, care- 

 less of anything but the money reward and tlie personal gratifi- 

 cation. 



Architecture has for its province the execution of single and 

 isolated monuments. It is not easy to reproduce the Parthenon 

 or St. Peter's, anjl the architect has every inducement to devote 

 himself to the production of works the merit of which he will not 

 divide with the copyist, the printer, or the engraver, — which he 

 wants no translator to make known to other nations, but which 

 are felt and understood by people of all countries and all ages. 

 Architecture has, too, this distinction, that it has an immediate and 

 an obvious utilitarian character. The painter, the sculptor, and 

 the musician minister indirectly to the uses of society ; the poet 

 and the dramatist may propose a moral end, hut it is not needful 

 they should do so ; whereas there are few woi-ks of architecture 

 which do not bear the stamp of usefulness. It may be thought by 

 some enough to appeal to this sense of usefulness, but until the 

 architect can satisfy himself that Newgate or Bedlam engrosses the 

 favour bestowed upon Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, he will 

 do well not to be unmindful of the artistic relations of his profes- 

 sion. As the mighty dome of St. Paul's is seen from so many 

 p'6int.s towering over London, how well does it mark the wide ex- 

 panse of ])(ipulation crowding below. There is a greatness in the 

 sight which cannot pass unacknowledged, while the statesman and 

 the moralist knows too well the influence of great thoughts and 

 great associations on the public mind to neglect those means by 

 wliicli tliey can be awakened and upheld. Athens, it is true, sank 

 with the glories of the Parthenon untarnished, but not until the 

 living spirit of art had been quenched. 



The imaginative or creati\e power of the artist is what is not 

 allowed for in Mr. Cleghoru's theories. His idealism resolves 

 itself into the study of nature and the adaptation of the fine 

 jrart of one individual to the fine part of another to constitute an 

 ideal or perfect whole. He quarrels with Ilaislitt for alHrming 



that the ideal is the preference of that which is fine in nature to 

 that which is less so; but he does not set up in its place anything 

 which is clearer. Perliaps there is no difference. The naturalists, 

 as represented by Mr. Hazlitt, say, "There is nothing which is 

 fine in art, but what is taken immediately, and as it were in the 

 mass, from nature." Mr. Cleghorn, for the moderate idealists, 

 does not traverse this, but says, that " Ideal art is finer than 

 nature ;" though from what we can make out, ideal art is only 

 selected nature. 



As to the question whether it is better to represent individual na- 

 ture with individual defects, accidents, and peculiarities,orto repre- 

 sent Jupiter with some of the features of the lion, and Hercules with 

 the neck of a bull, to say nothing of fauns, satyrs, and centaurs, — 

 this seems to us a question which, if solved in favour of the latter 

 side, does not give any valid support to the idealists. Indeed, 

 there is nothing which has ever yet been brought forward which 

 shows that the Greeks owed their excellence to anything but the 

 study of nature, or that there is any other mode of attaining ex- 

 cellence in art. We are therefore the more hopeful of the future 

 of English art, as at any rate we have the groundwork of a study 

 of nature ; and this, supported by a prudent reference to the old 

 masters, as confirmatory of the course of study, will, with a more 

 liberal education and a more catholic feeling of art, give us artists 

 of whose works we shall not be asliamed. 



Railway Engineering ; containing a General Table for the Calcula- 

 tion of Earthworks. By T. Bakeb, C.E. London: Longman, 1848. 

 8vo. pp. 64. 



We regret to perceive that Mr. P. Barlow has permitted this 

 hook to be dedicated to him, for we are sure that he was ignorant 

 of the dubious character of the honour conferred on liim by the 

 unscrupulous author. There need not be the slightest delicacy or 

 hesitation in affirming that the whole performance is a collection 

 of gross plagiarisms. The formula for the super-elevation of the 

 outer rail of a railway curve is taken from De Pambour. Methods 

 which have long been puldished for setting out curves, the author 

 claims as his own, on the plea that they were privately communi- 

 cated to his i)upils, and that some years ago he sent to the " Gen ■ 

 tleman's Diary' a paper on the subject, which teas rejected. 



The " General Table for the Calculation of Earthwork on Rail- 

 ways, &c." is a direct copy from the "General Table for facilitating 

 the Calculation of Earthworks for Railways, Canals, &c." by Mr. 

 Bashforth. There is not even a colourable variation from the 

 original in the copy, — it is an exact reprint, line for line and figure 

 for figure; with a few additions, but not a single omissinn. Every 

 one of Mr Bashforth's tabular numbers re-appears in Mr. Baker s 

 table. We had intended, in order to render the plagiarism pal- 

 pable, to print a column from one table by the side of the corre- 

 sponding one in the other table; but after getting halfway through 

 the labour of copying the figures, we found that there was not a 

 single alteration or omission, and therefore abandoned the task as 

 useless. 



A general reader, not familiar with the character of earthwork 

 tables, might deem the similarity accidental or inevitable — just as 

 if two persons published different tables of common logarithms 

 or square roots, the tabular figures must coincide where both are 

 correct. The slightest consideration, however, wiU show that the 

 present is not an analogous case. A great number of earthwork 

 tables has been published, but none except Mr. Baker's has the 

 same figures as Mr. Bashforth's : and for this plain reason, — that 

 other tables, such as Mr. Bidder's or Sir John MacueLll's, ape 

 applied by methods, and for purposes, entirely different. Sir John 

 Macneill's, for instance, are not general, but have the results for 

 particular slopes and bases, worked out ready to the engineer's 

 hand. Mr. Bidder's table, on the contrary, is general, and con- 

 siders the prismoid in three separate portions. Mr. Bashforth's 

 is also general, but considers the prismoid in two portions ; one of 

 which has no real existence, but being merely assumed for facility 

 of calculation, is ultimately subtracted. Now considering the 

 perfect independence of these mctliods, it is clear that tlie tables 

 founded on tliem, though entirely different from each other, may 

 lead to identical results. But the only person who has adopted 

 Mr. Bashforth's very original plan of considering the slopes to be 

 hypotlietically continued till they meet in an apex, is Mr. Bakei;. 

 He therefore is the only person ivho could use the same figures. 



AVe have too much confidence in the right feelings of engineers, 

 to suppose for an instant that this attempt to take the fruit of high 

 talents and unweared toil from the lawful owner will prove suc- 

 cessful. In our apprehension, the literary offence is much aggra- 



