310 



THE CIA IL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[September, 



neglect, nav insult that lias been offered to Ireland ; jiarticularly as to the 

 stone that lias been tendered (at least so I have seen stated in several of the 

 public priiitt) yratU to the public. 



I have the honour to be, your's, 



A Lovua OF Fair Play. 



[We always view with sus]iicion any offer that is made gratis — ^it is fre- 

 quently a complete delusion. We have also lieard of offers being made by 

 noblemen and gentlemen to supply tlie stone for the New Houses of Parlia- 

 ment f/rali'iloux!if. btit when the offers were sifted, they were generally found 

 not worth accepting, for what is meant by the word i/ralis, in this business, 

 is to supply the stone embedded in the quarry, which may be generally ob- 

 tained at any new quarry upon i)aying a royalty of Xa. to \s. (jd. per ton, or 

 about Irf. per foot cube — this royalty forms the most trifling part of the price 

 of stone — the cost is made up by the heavy and tmavoidable ctjiences of 

 quarrying, getting, carriage to the water side, and freightage. Besides it is 

 oft«n found that the stone is of such a hard quality that the labour upon 

 working it, is double the price of another stone which fully answers the pur- 

 pose — for instance the labour upon granite in working it in gothic mouldings 

 is treble the price of labour on Portland stone, and the same with other 

 stones and marbles ; which « ould render the cost of the stone work of a 

 htiilding when worked, nearly double, if not more ; thus instead of the coun- 

 try gaining by the gift, it would be very materially the loser — so much for 

 gratit. .\sto the injustice to Ireland, the Scotch might as well complain of 

 the refusal of their granite which was offered by a nobleman to be supplied 

 gratuitously ; but when it was explained to him that the cost of the stone 

 when worked would be far more than the stone which is being supplied for 

 the New Houses, he immediately acknowledged that his offer was not worth 

 accepting. — Editor.] 



IMPROVTED LAND SURVEYING CHAIN. 



Sir — Obsening in a former number of your Journal a description of an 

 improved suneying pole, I venture to trouble you with an account of what I 

 consider an improvement w hich I have lately made in the chain, namely, having 

 thellth, 21st, 31st, and4l8t links made of brass, the rest being of iron ; by this 

 arrangement the brass link, being in all cases nearer the middle of the chain 

 than the token, will at once point out whether such token be 10 or 90, 60 or 

 40, &c., and as a matter of course the liability to mistake 40 for 00, and so 

 on, entirely done away with. In mineral surveying a chain of this construc- 

 tion is incalculably superior to one of the old. 



If you think the hint is likely to be useful to any of your readers, I shall 

 feel obliged by yoiu' giving it a place in the Journal. 

 Most respectfully your's, 



William James Hindle. 



Bamsley, Aug. 3, 1840. 



PARISIAN AND LONDON HOUSE BUILDING. 



[The following, from a series of letters in the "Dublin Evening 

 Post," IS, we conceive, well worthy of being triinsferred to our Journal, 

 where it will be better aud more conveniently preserved than in the 

 columns of a newspaper. Besides some direct information, it contains 

 some clever and pertinent remarks, although we do not subscribe to 

 every one of the writer's opinions.] 



Paris, as a city, pleases me more this time than last year, though it cannot 

 boast of the grace of novelty in my travelled eyes. Hut I have looked, and 

 am endeavouring to look through it more carefully. There is a cheerfulness 

 in the warm colouriug of the buildings in that beautiful stone, of which the 

 city is made, which cement can never imitate. It is not one gray, uninterest- 

 ing, and monotonous brick like Dublin — nor, like London, is the dirty and 

 smoky red interrupted in some quarters of the town liy the masks of stucco, 

 of all colours and in all states of decomposition, which covers the skeleton 

 palaces. The finest and most showy parts of London are gingerbread and 

 pasteboard to the buildings here. I doubt not, however, to an un])ractised 

 eye, several parts of London — I am uot now talking of public buildings — will 

 appear as fine as the general run of iiouses in this city — such as the shops in 

 Regent Street, and flic mansions in the Regent's Park. I select these, for 

 they were the first erected under the new system. They were the earliest 

 eftbrfs of (leorgc IV., a ri;au magnificent enough in his asjiirafion, but of a 

 taste most tawdiy and glaring. lie wished, appareutly, to say, with Angtis- 

 tus, Ibat he found his capital of brii 1;, and that he left it of marble. Hut he 

 forgot that the Roman Emperor spent bis life — and he attained the purple 

 at a very early age — in building up the alia mmiia Rmnce such as Attila 

 found it — and that he had, in the mean time, the absolute command of all 

 the riches of the world, and of the genius of Greece and Italy — those riches 

 for such purposes would have been"useless. The Regent of England— and 

 he deserves some credit for the design, childish anif ridii;ulons as it was, 

 inasmuch as it evinced the presence of some geims of imagination in a man 

 whose character was stained by ra,iny dezrading vices — the Regent, I say, 

 thought to accomplish, in a dozen years, what occupied the entire reign of 

 he second Csrsar. He set about tl'ie scheme w ith great zeal — he had ready a 



class of secondary arch'te-ts — he liad nra^^ings anil plans in abundance — 

 and, above all, he had the sanction of Parliament. To work he went — but 

 it was not to marble, nor yet to Portland stone, or to granite that he applied 

 himself — it was to making Roman cement. It was to plastering the bouses 

 with a verj- pretty, nay excellent composition, I admit, and cutting out the 

 fronts of the dwelling-houses as Temples of Theseus, P.trtlicuons, Acropolises, 

 and fanes dedicated to the winds. .Vll was lUrty and perishing brick within 

 — without all was a coating of architcclnral painting. And then the strange 

 variety in which all orders and ages of architecture were jumbled together. 

 The tailor's house had a Grecian portico, ami his next door neighbour, the 

 draper, rejoiced in a Gothic castle. Here was a temple of Bacchus — there 

 was a thing somewhat resembling a Chinese pagoda, only more full, if possible, 

 of pretension and exaggeration. You saw at a glance, that this part of the 

 city of Loudon was made for the nonce — that it was gotten u]i for a show — 

 that it was fine and glaring scene-iiainting, not half so fine, or half so striking 

 as Stanfield's sketches, because the designs and the executors of the plan 

 bad not half the genius of that excellent ,irt;st. But let me be just. The 

 design of trying to alter the dirty and ferruginoui' aspect of London was com- 

 mendable ; and if he deserves any praise for anything — an hypothesis upon 

 which I am very unwiUing to insist — George IV. is entitled to some com- 

 mendation for what he attempted., rather, certainly, than for anything he 

 accomplished. An impulse was given to architectural improvement, in a city 

 which, though it contains many splendid edifices, was, until this endeavour 

 was made, the most uninteresting — and, may 1 not add, notwitlistanding its 

 situation on a river twenty times more magnificent than the Seine, thchugest 

 and nglieet collection of brick and mortar in the world — nothing but tiles and 

 brick. Why, there is the Corporation of London — I have seen the halls of 

 some of their guilds made to dine — and principally made for that purpose — 

 seven or eight hundred individuals — I have seen one which was as big as a Me- 

 thodist meeting-house, and as ugly as a barn ; the building itself (and it was a 

 new one when I saw it) was placed in a nook or alley, and piled up with brick, I 

 know not how mit\\ /at/wi/is high. The money expended to make such an 

 edifice, would, in Paris or in Petersburg (a city of yesterday), produce abeauti- 

 ful biulding, architecturally elegant in the exterior, and containing within all 

 the accommodation — all the appurtenances and means to boot, of dining 

 gloriously on green fat, and getting gloriously drunk with dancing champaign. 

 The trtith is, that until a recent period, John Bull was thinking of nothing 

 e\en in his public buildings, but being com/orladle — a word that he delights 

 in, and which you hear in France pronounced with great ytixlo — John insist- 

 ing, truly, I believe, that the French language is without an equivalent term — 

 his notions of comfort, however, in tlus regard, being confined to eating and 

 drinking. The admission is due to George IV., I must repeat again, that to 

 his absurd zeal, in trying to convert the brick of London into marble, the 

 real improvements which that great city is now in the process of acquiring, 

 may be fairly enough attributed. A better order of architects are forming ; 

 private buildings, as well as public, .ire not any longer left to the taste of the 

 bricklayer, or the cunning of the carpenter. 'The two-foot rule and the plum- 

 met are indispensable, and the builder must employ them ; but it has been 

 found out at length that there are other things indispensable in building an 

 edifice for an imperial city. When sought for, talents of the kind required 

 are always to be found. They existed in what are called the dark ages, when 

 Westminster Abbey and Rouen Cathedral were built. It would be an un- 

 courtly satire on England — it would be a most false misrepresentation of her 

 intellect, ingenuity, and taste, to pretend that architects wouhl be wanting if 

 they were required. They are uot wanting. It is true the National (iallery 

 is a national disgrace, and the Royal Exchange, when it arises from its ashes, 

 may prove an ignominy, if the city don't look to it; but, on the whole, 

 within the last twelve or fifteen years, the signs and tokens of a better order 

 of things are manifest even to an observer the most cursory. But ar/es must 

 elapse liefore London can be what she ought to be architecturally, and what 

 she will be, no doubt, should she hold, as she has done, with such transcen- 

 dant glory, the sceptre of the seas. 



But Paris has been, since it first became great, an architeclurnl town. 

 During all her eventful history, her public buildings held a prominent place 

 in the minds of her kings and politicians. The French are fond to madness 

 of glory — of martial renown principally — but all sorts of fame, e\ eu to the 

 making of a cap or periwig, are prized, perliaps, beyond their v,alue. They 

 value themselves upon their I'oets, their orators, their historians, their painters, 

 their architects. In Louis XIV. they had a king who was as vain as any of 

 his subjects on all these national vaiiitieg — if you will, a king, too, that had 

 the power to execute his will, at any expense of treasure and oppression. 

 The policy of his reign may be questionable, and he may have been himself a 

 tyrant ; but he adorned Piuis, and he completed Versailles. It was pride, if you 

 Uke, and selfishness; but to it the present generation is indebted, at least, for 

 fixing, propagating, and, I think, pcrpttuating the taste of the people in this 

 regard. The improccmi-nts of Paris began nearly two hundred years ago, and 

 they have been in constant progress. Those of London are scarcely thirty 

 years old. But, in the interim (of 200 years) London has increased ueaiiy 

 fifteen fold in population and houses, while Paris has certainly not l;eeu trebled. 

 At the commencement of the reign of George III., a comedy — 1 forget the 

 name — was produced — I saw it acted myself, when they used fo play come- 

 dies — in which two interlocutors are introduced, discussing the relative popu- 

 lation and size of the two greatest cities of Europe. In those days, statistics 

 was no science ; but, the circumstance is enough to show, without hunting 

 yoiur library to ascertain the truth, and missing tlie game, most probably, at 



