1849.1 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



197 



judgment upon the doings of "contemporaries;" yet, for our part, 

 we do not see wherefore living architects should not be damned 

 with just as little ceremony as living autliors; — that is, of course, 

 supposing they deserve it. 



For tlie present we will confine ourselves to the British Museum 

 alone, and to what Mr. Fergusson says of that monstrously costly, 

 and eu-regiously unsatisfactory national edifice. We certainly do 

 not quarrel with him for his opinion of the building itself, which 

 he minutely examines, and proves (very satisfactorily? ) to be as 

 unsatisfactory as it well could be. If we quarrel with liim at all, 

 it is for liis too-studied attempt to exonerate the architect liimself 

 from the disgrace justly due to him. "I would not, on any ac- 

 count," says Mr. Fergusson, "be understood to say one word 

 against Sir Robert Smirke, personally." Neither do we, nor have 

 we ever done so; for of the man himself we know no more than 

 we do about the man in the moon. As a man he may be excellent, 

 and even exemplary for aught we can say to the contrary, but as 

 an architect we hold him to be a most wretched one, and prosaic 

 besides; in short, no better than a Pecksniff on a larger scale. 

 After calling "the Museum as bad and as extravagant a building as 

 could well be designed," Mr. Fergusson immediately adds, "but 

 let the blame be thrown on the right shoulders;" and then pro- 

 ceeds to lay the whole of it on those of the unlucky Trustees. 

 Now, so far from thinking, as Mr. Fergusson appears, or is willing 

 to appear to do, that the Trustees dictated to Smirke, we should 

 rather fancy that it was Smirke wlio dictated — tliat is, recom- 

 mended to them the style and character their new building should 

 be in. There most assuredly is nothing in any of his previous works 

 to show that he would have chosen any other style or mode of de- 

 sign had he been left to his own free and unbiassed choice, and 

 granted a complete carte blanche. At any rate, even if the Trus- 

 tees did dictate the style, they did not stand over him while he was 

 making the design, and insist upon his introducing all the blun- 

 ders, faults, and absurdities wliieh we now find in it. To suppose 

 that would be supposing that the architect was a mere mechanical 

 agent or machine, that worked just as tliey impelled and directed 

 its movements. Either the design of the Museum is Sir R. 

 Smirke's, or it is not: — if, as the very natural supposition is, it 

 really be his own, he of course is answerable for it, and for all its 

 defects, deficiencies, and short-comings; and if, on the contrary, lie 

 has been no more than a mere clerk of the works, acting under 

 other persons' instructions and directions, in like manner as in case 

 of success he would have reaped the full credit due to their judg- 

 ment and good ideas, he must now abide by the discredit attached 

 to failure. We hardly know whether Mr. Fergusson is to be un- 

 derstood as speaking with sarcastic irony or not, wlien he says 

 that, had not Smirke fallen in with the ideas of tlie Trustees, con- 

 trary, as is of course implied, to his own better judgment, they 

 "would certainly have wished him a good morning, have sent for 

 some more compliant person, and he might have retired to oblo- 

 quy and" — oh! dreadful — "to starvation!" Nothing, it seems, but 

 his' compliance with the whims of the Trustees, saved poor Sir 

 Robert Smirke from pauperism and the workhouse, — though we 

 think he must have feathered his nest pretty well long before. 

 From starvation his compliance may possibly have rescued Sir 

 Robert, but most certainly not from obloquy, unless there be more 

 of praise than obloquy in its being said — and Mr. Fergusson him- 

 self says it — that it is, after costing about seven hundred thou- 

 sand pounds, as bad as bad can be. Whether Sir Robert will now 

 be glad to shelter himself from the pitiless pelting of criticism 

 under such excuse, we know not; but Mr. Fergusson certainly looks 

 upon him as having been a mere instrument, implement, or tool in 

 the hands of the Trustees, and accordingly observes, "Though I 

 have much to say against the building, I entirely exonerate the 

 architect"! — so that Sir Robert is after all a very fortunate man, for 

 if he has got his head broken, he has also go it well plaistered up 

 again by the same hand that cracked it, and now stands "entirely 

 exonerated" — just as safe and sound as ever. Sir Robert may 

 stick that feather of "entire exoneration" in his cap, without any 

 one envying him. 



Luckily for them, the Trustees haveexcedingly broad shoulders, 

 and a good many pair of tliem, so that they can perhaps xery well 

 bear the wliole of the very weighty burthen which Mr. Fergusson 

 lays upon them. For one thing, they certainly are highly censur- 

 able, — for they being only trustees for the nation, and the work 

 a national one, to be paid for out of the nation's money, they 

 ought to have endeavoured to secure the most eflScient architectu- 

 ral talent to be found in the country, instead of blindly confiding 

 in an individual on the mere strength of his general repute. Had 

 Sir R. Smirke previously erected a Museum which liad obtained 

 general favour as a successful work of its kind, it would have been 



quite a different case. But he had not done so; consequently, a 

 structure for such very particular purpose would be quite as nuuh 

 a first attempt on his part as on that of the most obscure indivi- 

 dual in the profession. Nay, it is very possible that some amongst 

 the obscure and unknown might have, in the course of tlieir stu- 

 dies, given attention to the particular subject. At all events, it was 

 the duty of the Trustees — both the big-wigs and the bald heads 

 which compose that many-headed body — to call upon the best talent 

 procurable, and afford it the opportunity of coming forward and 

 manifesting itself. If there was objection to a general public com- 

 petition, as merely opening the door to self-suflicient mediocrity and 

 a troublesome mass of designs, the majority of which must at once 

 have been set aside, at any rate a limited number of known talent 

 might have been invited to submit their ideas; from wliich the 

 better points might have been selected, and afterwards combined 

 together, two or even more architects being associated in the 

 work — supposing no individual design was so satisfactory as not to 

 be capable of improvement by engrafting upon it something bor- 

 rowed from others. This, as it appears to us, is the safest and 

 most rational course to be pursued; and the fairest to be adopted 

 in public — at least, all government works. Instead of which, they 

 are if not actually made jobs, made to appear to be such. 



By throwing all the odium of the failure of the British Museum 

 upon the Trustees, Mr. Fergusson has, perhaps quite unintention- 

 ally, levelled a blow that falls very hard in a different quarter; 

 for he scruples not to call the new building at Buckingham Palace 

 "so liideously ugly that both the sovereign and the people must be 

 glad to get rid of them." The latter perhaps may, because they 

 had no hand in, nor were even so much as consulted about it; but, 

 as there is no evidence, or even so much as a doubt, to the con- 

 trary, the natural presumption is that the design was found satis- 

 factory and approved of in what the newspapers term "a very high 

 quarter." Tlierefore, the excuse put forth for Sir Robert Smirke is 

 equally valid for Mr. Edward Blore. "As a servant of the public." 

 tlie former "did wliat he was told to do;" and as the official architect 

 or surveyor of tlie Palace, the latter acted, no doubt, similarly, and 

 did as he was directed to do, although both the one and the other 

 might have shown skill and taste in complying with the general 

 directions given them. To hint that her Majesty would now be 

 glad to get rid of the costly improvement — or, to speak more cor- 

 rectly, the costly addition to the Palace, and to say that the Palace 

 itself so improved "will not long be tolerated, but a new one de- 

 manded," is anything but flattenng to some other persons besides 

 Mr. Blore, whom we accuse not, because he, no doubt, has done his 

 very best. Let us hope, then, that it has saved the poor man from 

 the horrors of "starvation." 



After tliis digression, we return to the Museum, speaking of 

 whose fa9ade, Mr. Fergusson says: "If it is not beautiful, it is 

 inexcusable; if it is beautiful, a strong case is made out in its 

 f ivour. It certainly does not possess what is the strongest objec- 

 tion to the [inner] court, which is that it is not seen ; for no one 

 can either approach or pass the Museum without its catching the 

 eye; it is therefore in the right place, which the other is not; and if 

 ornament was to be added to the Museum, it was here that it was to 

 be placed. Is it then beautiful ? This [that] is a matter of taste 

 which each must answer for himself." As regards the last remark 

 and the doctrine implicated in it, we do not at all hold with Mr. 

 Fergusson, — because when a man comes before the public as a 

 critic, it is for him to instruct by plainly discriminating between 

 good and bad taste. All art is matter of taste; so that if one 

 man's taste be just as valid and of equal authority as another's, 

 many of the dicta and verdicts of careful and conscientious cri- 

 ticism might be reversed. Of the thousands, or tens of thousands, 

 and even hundreds of thousands, who in the course of a year visit 

 the British Museum, how many are there who can fully appreciate, 

 and who sincerely relish the Elgin Marbles.? Shall we say a score.? 

 — ten would be nearer the mark. If it is to be left to every one 

 to answer for himself whether a work of art, or what makes pre- 

 tension to be considered such, be really meritorious, there is, as it 

 seems to us, an end to all criticism — all esthetic reasoning; and 

 one man's judgment, or fancy without any judgment at all, becomes 

 quite as valid as another's. 



Notwithstanding, however, the lenity with which he leaves every 

 one to judge for himself how far the facade is beautiful, Mr. Fer- 

 gusson gives it immediately afterwards as his own opinion that the 

 design is "both cold and unartistic," — adding, "there is a dismal 

 fune'real look about this specimen, which to my mind is singularly 

 repulsive;" and further says: "Since it has been erected 1 have not 

 heard one voice raised in its praise, and certainly not one vi ord of 

 laudation has been printed that I am aware of; but, on the con- 

 trary, blame has been both loud and deep." That, indeed, as « e 



