;5J2 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL, 



[November, 



few years tlie sandbanks to a Rreat extent ceased to exist, and the 

 obstructions to tlie navigation were less frequent. These improve- 

 ments luivin^f been effected in tlie most danfj-erous parts of the 

 river, together with the systematic arrangements vvliich have been 

 made in the pilotage, the' immense traffic of the Danube is now 

 carried on almost uninterruptedly; for it is a rare occurrence to 

 hear of any of the steamers getting aground. 



Having brought this subject before the English public, I have 

 no hesitation in saying, if the same means are resorted to in the 

 Indian rivers, that, in a very few years, the impossibility repre- 

 sented by Mr. Bourne will cease to exist, and the rivers be made 

 navigable at a remunerative profit. Certainly, if such people as 

 the i)oor Hungarians can afford to spend sufficient per annum for 

 regulating the rivers in that country, L consider that 100,000/. per 

 anrnmi might be spent by the Indian (Jovernment for the same 

 object, lea\ing the navigation of the rivers to private enterprise: 

 and with 100,000/. per annum, for a few years, thousands of acres 

 of land would be rescued from tlie rivers; swamps, in a great mea- 

 sure, would cease to exist; the banks would be converted into 

 healthy and fertile districts, giving employment to thousands in 

 agricultural pursuits. 



It is my intention to resume this subject, and to explain some 

 other improvements connected with the Danube and Hungary. 



G. S. 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK, 

 FASCICULUS XCIX. 



" I must have liberty 

 Withal, as Urge a charter ai the wiudg. 

 To blotv on whom 1 please." 



I. To return to my remarks on the Army and Navy Clubhouse: 

 — besides being disfigured by such gross negligences as those 

 jiointed out, and being totally devoid of anything like contrivance 

 or study in its arrangement, the plan is such that it has not even 

 convenience to recommend it ; on the contrary, is so decidedly 

 inconvenient in that respect, that it is astonishing how the pro- 

 fessional gentleman who assisted the committee at the second com- 

 petition could have passed over so many positive defects without 

 pointing them out to those to whom he acted in the capacity of 

 adviser, and urging the necessity for their being corrected if that 

 design was to be adopted. Infinitely greater contrivance was dis- 

 lilayed in some of the plans sent in at the first competition, for 

 they provided not merely commodious, but handsome corridors or 

 other approaches to the further rooms: instead of which, the 

 Strangers' Coffee-room and House Dining-room can now be reached 

 only through a long and most inconveniently-narrow passage — 

 barely wide enough to allow of two persons passing each other 

 without jostling. That passage, too, takes a very awkward bend 

 just where — in consequence of such bend — there is no light, and 

 where there are several doors — those of back-stairs, servants' 

 places, and waterclosets,— immediately close by all which gentle- 

 men will have to pass. In the Strangers' Coffee-room, the windows 

 which are at one end of it, look into a mere area, only 7 feet 

 wide, with the prospect, however, of three other windows — those 

 of back staircases and passages immediately facing them:— strange, 

 yet perhaps therefore characteristic disposition, of plan, the room 

 being intended for strangers. Unless there be some sort of sky- 

 light besides (though none is indicated in the plan) the room must 

 be an exceedingly gloomy one; and if, on the other hand, there 

 be a skylight or lantern, there was no occasion at all for other 

 windows, unless it was for the sake of the prospect just mentioned. 

 In one respect, indeed, convenience has been attended to, although 

 not very delicately, nor is it so well managed as it might have been 

 — a door opening into a watercloset being placed immediately next, 

 and at a right angle to, that of the House Dining-room. Of the 

 upper floor plan, I have no means of judging; but guessing at it 

 from the arrangement of the lower one, I take it to be at the very 

 best, exceedingly commonplace. 



n. I have not yet quite done with the Army and Navy Club- 

 house: let us now consider the exterior. In the first place, it now 

 appears that what looks like a separate entresol or mezzanine over 

 the lower floor, is not such in reality, those small openings forming 

 internally a second series of windows over the others. By means 

 of this arrangement, the ground-floor rooms are made to appear 

 externally much lower than they really are; and the basement is 

 Kiit up into two stories, when it mi^ht as well have been made to 



show itself as a single lofty one, — and even much better, since 

 there is assuredly no beauty whatever in the design of its present 

 windows — either the upper or lower ones; and as assuredly, too, 

 that part of the building being an express copy from Sansovino is 

 rather an aggravation than an excuse, copying being in itself a 

 confession of inability to invent or produce; and the copying what 

 is at variance with actual circumstances showing, in addition to 

 such inability, strange perverseness of judgment also. As it has 

 been managed, it is one exceedingly disagreeable defect in the 

 composition, that the small windows alluded to, rise up higher 

 than the arches of the loggia of the east front, instead of ranging 

 with them. Why were not arches, similar to those of the loggia, 

 continued througliout the whole basement, and tilled-in with win- 

 dows, either continuously from bottom to top, or divided into two 

 openings by a transom corresponding with the impost, — which 

 might then have been enlarged and enriched, and the upper 

 semicircular openings made to form lunettes in a cove in the 

 rooms within.' Even had there been an actual entresol, that might 

 have been done; and greater consistency and nobleness of design 

 would have resulted from it. The balconies before the principal- 

 floor windows are, at the best, in rather coarse and uncouth taste, 

 and by projecting forwards and resting immediately upon the cor- 

 nice of the basement, they occasion a most awkward and ungainly 

 efl'ect, and seem to clog up and encumber that part of the front. 

 As to the windows themselves, on that floor, though they are in- 

 tended to present the appearance of being lofty arched ones, the 

 openings themselves, do not even rise so high as the imposts 

 of the arches, being square-headed, and the remainder fiUed-up 

 with brick-work. Deception of that kind would have been allow- 

 able enough, had it been resorted to to make a single window look 

 like all the others in the same range, although in reality different 

 from them; but to perpetrate deception of the kind quite gra- 

 tuituously and by wholesale, accuses the architect most strongly 

 of either ignorance or disregard of logical design, and of inability 

 to accommodate design to the requirements of the particular 

 case. In tliis case, tlie deception practised is so far from being 

 at all ingenious, or exhibiting any contrivance, as to be on the 

 contrary a very clumsy one. It will be no very agreeable sur- 

 prise to .persons when they first enter the upper rooms to find that 

 the lofty arched windows^ and corresponding loftiness in other 

 respects promised by outside appearances, have quite vanished. 

 The trick must also be betrayed externally, by the absence of 

 window draperies in the heads of the windows; and more strongly 

 still when the rooms are lit-up of an evening — while all is light 

 and brilliant within and below, the upper part of the windows will 

 be all in darkness. If tlie "Army and Navy" want a motto for 

 their building, let them take 



Fbonti Nulla Fides. 

 A more appropriate and significant one they cannot possibly find. — 

 It would not at all surprise me to hear that they already begin to 

 damn Sansovino, and one or two other people besides, — Count 

 D'Orsay included, for his cajoling them into a precious bad bargain 

 with his "most beautiful palace in Europe." 



III. The windows of the principal floor of the "Army and 

 Navy"have probably been made to appear large arched apertures for 

 no other reason than of rivalry to the Carlton Clubhouse, except 

 it be that such stratagem was resorted to as being the easiest way 

 of getting over some diflficulty, and of avoiding the heresy of com- 

 mitting anything like a fresh idea in design. The arches might 

 have been retained as necessary for decorating and filling-up the 

 space above the windows; but had logical design been attended to, 

 the apertures would have been made to show themselves as they 

 really are — square-hetided; and in the tympanums of the arches 

 semicireular niches might have been introduced, for the reception 

 of busts of military and naval heroes — at some future time, at least, 

 if not at first: and surely such decoration would have been an 

 equally appropriate and striking, as well as honourable, distinction 

 to that clubhouse. 



IV. Although I did not intend to say anything further concern- 

 ing Mr. Kuskin, having already said so much, 1 am induced to do 

 so in consequence of having just met with a long critique upon 

 'The Seven Lamps,' which shows very strongly that I am not the 

 only one who thinks that Mr. Iluskin has been prodigiously over- 

 rated as a critic on Art — at least, upon Architecture. Even the 

 Art-Journal, too, albeit not addicted to censure, and notwithstand- 

 ing that it gives him credit for "magical language, lofty poetry, 

 warm generosity," and a good deal besides, takes him to task rather 

 severely for the barbarous doctrine involved in the following 

 maxim: — "Not to decorate things belonging to purposes of active 

 and occupied life." To say the truth, such doctrine strikes so 

 directly at the root of all that is now being done with the view oi 



