184.9.1 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



195 



Number. Description. \Vei«ht. Rnte, 



lb. £ 8. d. 



38 .. .. Brought Forward 



40 Hardwood Packings iiniler Hails (B in.) — II 4:t 



2 Longitudinal bearers {2'i\ feet cubic) . . — M "2 .1 



1 Transome 1 U. H in. cubic — 2 3 



SI 

 28,.^12 parts in a mile of single line. 



Cost of ditto, exclusive of labour in laying £1, 



Midland Great Western of Ireland {Mr. Hemans), — Drawing 



Number. Description. Weight. Rate. 



lb. £ 8. d. 



2 Rails ("B lb. per yard) "liO 10 per ton. 



2 Joint Plates 13 li 



16 Screws to hold down Rails "] 



8 Screw-bolt at Joints 1 29 4 



8 Fangs for ditto J 



2 Longitudinal Bearers (15 feet cubic). .. — 2 3 

 2 Transverse Sleepers (4J feet cubicl .. .. — 2 3 

 4 Trenails for joints of Longitudinal bear- 

 ers — IJ 



44 

 15,488 parts in a mile of single line. 



Cost of ditto, exclusive of labour ID laying s£2. 



Sir John MacnieWs Method. — Drawing No. 5. 



Number. Description. Weight. Rate. 



lb. £ 8. d. 



2 HaiU (921b. per yard) 920 10 per ton. 



8 Screw-bolts at J,. in ts 8-33 4 



8 Fangs for ditto 8' 4 



10 Spikes 8- 4 



2 Wroughtiron Chairs 12 10 (1 



6 Sleepers (20 ft. 9i in. cubic) — 5 (i each. 



36 



12,672 parts in a mile of single line. 



Cost of ditto, exclusive of labour in laying j^"", 



Mr. Dockray's Proposed Method. — Drawing No. 6. 



Number. Description. Weight. Rate. 



lb. £ s. d. 



2 Bails (100 lb. per yard) 1000 10 per ton. 



8 Screw-bolts Jit Joints — 



8 Fangs for ditto — 



10 Spikes — 



2 Wrought-iron Chairs — 



6 Transverse Sleepers — ^ 6 



2 Longitudiual Sleepers (Gft. 3 in. cubic). — 2 3 per foot 



38 

 13,.376 parts in a mile of single line. 



Cost of ditto, exclusive of labour in laying .£2,i 



Sdmmarv of the Cost of Five Yards. 



£ 



London and North- Western Railway (Old Method) . . 5 



Ditto ditto (New -Method) .. 6 



Great Western Railway (Mr. Brunei) .. .. ..6 



Midland Great Western of Ireland (.Mr. Hemans) .. 6 



Sir John Macniell's Method .. .. .. ..6 



Mr. Dockray's Proposed Method .. .. ,. ..7 



^38 



Average Cost . . . . . . £6 



Cost of Single Road per yard .. £\ 



9 8 



d. 

 5 



7 

 5i 



7 4 



10| 

 6f 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK, 

 FASCICULUS XCV. 



" I must have Itherly 

 Withal, as Urge a charter a- the winds, 

 To blow on whon) I please." 



I. I restime my comments on the "Seven Lamps" by quoting 

 the excellent passage last alluded to. "Of I'roportions," says 

 Ruskin, "so much has been written that I believe the only facts 

 which are of practical use have been overwhelmed and kept out of 

 sight by vain accumulations of particular instances and estimates. 

 Proportions are as infinite (and that in all kinds of things, as se- 

 verally in colours, lines, shades, lights, and forms) as possible airs 

 in music: and it is just as rational an attempt to teach a young 

 architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him 

 the proportions of fine works, as' it would be to teach him to com- 

 pose melodies by calculating the mathematical relations of the 

 notes in Beethoven's Adelaide, or Mozart's Requiem. The man 

 who has an eye and intellect will invent beautiful proportions, and 

 cannot help it; but he can no more tell us how to do it than 

 Wordsworth could tell us how to write a sonnet, or than Scott 

 could have told us how to plan a romance. But there are one or 



two general laws which can be told: they are of no use, indeed, 

 except as preventives of gross mistake; but they are so far worth 

 telling and remembering; and the more so because, in the discus- 

 sion of the subtle laws of proportion (which will never be either 

 numbered or known), architects are perpetually forgetting and 

 transgressing the very simplest of its necessities." — After this, it 

 is to be hoped that writers vvill deal less in qu.ackery and mysti- 

 fication on the subject of Proportion than they have hitherto done; 

 and in such manner, too, as to contradict themselves, by repre- 

 senting it as an exceedingly subtle and abstruse matter, yet at the 

 same time so exceedingly simple as to admit of being reduced to 

 the plainest arithmetical rules, which, as they pretend, serve 

 equally well alike for the most opposite cases. According to such 

 truly mischievous doctrine, an architect has no occasion whatever 

 for an eye for Proportion, since rules and computation will serve 

 his purpose just as well, or even better, inasmuch as machine-like 

 accuracy is secured, — cold, spiritless, and lifeless. The doctrine 

 of some, Vitruvius included, would go to convert our art into a 

 sort of barrel-organ, upon which all can grind music alike. Of 

 course they do not say as much in plain words, neither are they 

 themselves, perhaps, aware of the tendency of their own doctrines 

 and o]iinions — viz., that nothing ought to be done or attempted 

 now except what has some time or other been done before; as if 

 among all possible forms and combinations there were none yet 

 untried that would be found beautiful: such doctrine is, no doubt, 

 excellently well-suited to, and accordingly finds favour with, the 

 Incapable.^; who have no artistic instinct or asstlietic feeling to 

 guide them, and who, therefore, are not only glad to be spared the 

 trouble of thought and invention, nothing more than ready-made 

 ideas being required of them, but rejoice also that others should 

 be prohibited from exercising them by the dread of being set down 

 at once for licentious innovators. Your small critics, too, who 

 gabble only by book and by rote, entertain a mortal dislike to 

 aught partaking of freshness of mind and invention, because it 

 puts them (juite out; yet, although they do not know what to 

 make of it, they do know that they may very safely sneer at it 

 as heterodox and capricious. It is not, indeed, from every one 

 that we can expect any really new ideas worth having, yet there 

 surely must be some who are capable of detecting latent sources 

 of the beautiful, and of manifesting power of invention subordi- 

 nated to that correct taste which, it may be presumed, has been nou- 

 rished in them by previous study, — and by study, a very great deal 

 more is to be understood than the elementary discipline and training 

 of the office, or than becoming familiar with the various styles of the 

 arts hitherto practised, such study being merely of a passive sort, 

 and requiring the exertion of no other faculty than the memory; 

 whereas, the study which is most needed is that diligent scrutiny 

 and thoughtful examination of styles and tlieir monuments, by 

 which, wliile learning what has been done, we learn also to perceive 

 what more may be done. In comparison with this last kind of 

 study, the getting by lieart — as it is called — of tlie history of 

 styles, is work only for girls and old women — old ladies of the 

 masculine gender, and all ages, included. Vulnit ijuuatam; it is 

 serviceable enough in its way, but will no more make an architect 

 than poring over Vasari and Lanzi will make a man a painter. As 

 matters are managed at present, however, we seem to be well con- 

 tent to get architecture without having architects, — content with 

 what amounts to no more than new editions of the architecture of 

 former times, without original authorship. In ardiitecture we have 

 contrived to get to Finis, which is surely a very fine feather in the 

 cap of this nineteenth century. 



II. Ruskin lays by far too much stress upon the value of mate- 

 rial as absolutely essential to excellence of design. Most un- 

 questionably, genuine and therefore durable materials enhance th j 

 satisfaction we experience in contemplating an edifice that is 

 beautiful as a production of architecture, and we reasonablv 

 enough expect to find such materials to be employed for public 

 structures that ought to be enduring monuments of art. But Mi-. 

 Ruskin pushes what is in itself a proper feeling into downright 

 extravagance and absurdity when he denounces the making use of 

 artificial and imitative materials as "direct falsity of assertion re- 

 specting the nature of the material or the quantity of labour," 

 which falsity lie asserts to be nothing less than a tiioral deliiiqueacji.' 

 — insomuch that he holds it to be "as truly deserving of reprob^;- 

 tion as any other moral delinquency;" — which does not say much fiir 

 Air. John Ruskin's notions of morality. He is consistent, however, 

 in attributing a high degree of positive merit to mere cost of labour 

 and workmanship for its own sake, leaving merit of design and the 

 artistic value of the work altogether out of the question. Yet, 

 very certain it is, that, so far from giving pleasure, sumptuous niii- 

 terial and e>;peusive workmanship excite a painful feeling — one of 



26* 



