380 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[October, 



more to tlie ai]tiqu;iriaa than tlie moflerii |iliilosoplier — tlie visionary 

 than the painter of this clay, when, in all human probability, the resur- 

 rection of a true Apelles painting would, if not disgust the eye, remind 

 us more of the want of sarcophagi and their alleged power of swal- 

 lowing up decayed remains, than the preservative tomb of Daguerro- 

 type shades ; to whicli, by the bye, a word en passant — however 

 ingenious these bubbles may be, what is their worth to man? Modern 

 science is infested by gingerbread and Dutch metal ; and ere long 

 some booby of parchment brain will recommend us to walk about in 

 wire gauze, with plugged nostrils, to prevent infection, and fill our 

 halls, churches, and Houses of the WittenagemoUe with nitrous oxide 

 to secure extatic sensations and pure thoughts, — the air of heaven is 

 already washed for the Lords, and even Joseph Hume may allow 

 cheap, vulgar, yellow soap suds for Commons' use, — what next? 



The second advent of painting is at hand ; in less than twenty years 

 artists will move as an exalted race of men, and art be the high road 

 to rank and fame. Even Timon will live to see the desired change ; 

 and I trust sincerely such a portrait as one of your correspondents has 

 given of the driveller Northcote will rarely biot the page of liistory. 

 Man usually wears a domino in the masquerade of life, and he %vho 

 casts it aside and exposes, with Timon, the soul within, at least ren- 

 ders a greater moral service to mankind than all the sectarian speeches 

 at Exeter Hall in a century ; aye more, infinitely more, than all the 

 so called philanthropy of the day could achieve, although its tocsin 

 arouses at once men, women, children, and cash. 



I have said enough to show how much I should recommend the old- 

 fashioned bladder, especially if folded and tied round a quill for the 

 neck, as done by one colourman' if not more, and how much I detest 

 the namby pamby frippery of tubes, entailing as they do a real injury 

 to many, if not all, pigments; but, I must add, the older practice of 

 powder colours, merely ground finely in turpentine and left dry, for 

 the mixture of the artist himself, secundum artem, is preferable to 

 either; and I have full confidence in the conviction that a kindly at- 

 tention to, and faith in, tliese facts, the result of many years arduous, 

 costly, and incessant enquiry, and in promulgating vvhich I have no 

 personal interests at stake, will ensure a simplification of the art, a 

 defence against empirical trickery, and its final success. 



I have stated the only bad quality of wax,' its disposition to shrink 

 and flatten, if not cup, on the surface when joined to oil in painting. 

 It has, however, many good and recommendatory properties, and to it 

 nlone, I believe, we owe the existence at all of many of Reynolds's 

 beautiful pictures ; nay many damaged ones in which it had been used 

 were probably injured by a too rapidly applied coat of exterior var- 

 nish ; for in proportion as slow dryers and tough materials are used 

 should be the length of ixira time allowed before varnishing at all ; 

 and asphaltum, alike the Scylla and Charybdis of his career, be 

 shunned. 



Oclober 3;-i, 1844. 



WiLHELM DE WiNTERION. 



7 Harvey, in Catherine Street, Strand. 



e Wax might be made intensely useful in protecting the backs of pictures, geuerally 

 nearly in contact with ivalls, whether damp or dry, for the bacUs are tlie most vulnerable 

 parts, and yet, liithi.rto, neglected 'in toto,' and more might be done. I remember, some 

 tuenty years ago, a BIr. Diiisdale giving to the Commissioners of the Navy Board, a plan 

 for protecting canvas from dry rot and mildew, by soaking it in tan liquor, as the Vene- 

 tians, I believe, did with their picture canvas, and the Dutch now do, with all their sails 

 in the lishing marine. 



*^* In my hrst paper, of last month, by the accidental omission of interlineations, when 

 speaking o lead, I appear to say, " Flake white or, what is better, sulphate (U- muriate of 

 lead." — The sentence was intended to read thu^,— " Flake white or, what is better, German 

 kremnitz,— the sulphate, though beautiful, being deceptive ; and muriate of lead a French 

 folly— which is not only very yjilow (in fact a patent yellow made without heat) but, in- 

 stead of defying sulphuretted hydrogen changes instantly before it.'* 



t-rt Another, a singular, and special instance of the "rising of oil," and its conse- 

 quences, in setting at nought the " inherent permanence of ultramarine " was presented 

 to my notice yesterday ; an excellent landscape in the Jjossession of a highlygifted friend, 

 painted by the late Reverend John Thompson, after the mixed fashion of many of the 

 Venetian masters, viz., with a vehicle of thick size, from boiled gluten of wheat, with a 

 " little" acetic acid to assist its solubility — then glazed in oil with ordinary MacGelliip. 

 This landscape, I say, presents "yellow, horny clouds" for "warm white onesj" and, a 

 " profusely dense ultramarine blue sky, markedly green!" l\Ir. Thompson was an ex- 

 cellent painter, had high prices; and, merited them ; he scrupled not to expend twenty 

 guineas worth of ultramarine over single pictures ; yet, was his glorious spirit robbed of 

 more than half its reward from his reliance on "inherent permanence of colour in nil 

 painting :" when, had he glazed witil poppy oil and the " spirituous dryer," before spoken 

 of as given to the Secretary of the Commission of the Fine -\rts for publication, and 

 henceforth to be prepared by Blessrs. Winsor and Newton, artists colourmen to His 

 Eoyal Highness Prince Albert, and then varnished, at the proper time, his picture would 

 have lived at least 500 or tiOO years with its original blow sky, relieved by white and float- 

 ing clouds, which now, alas, in despite of his bold pencil and vivid colouring, look scarcely 

 tiettcr than a daub of Kosa de Tivoli, at least, to inexperienced eyes. 



ON THE OBSERVATORY OF PARIS. 



Translated for the Civil Engineer and Architect's Journalfrom a Report 

 made to the Chamber of Deputies by M. ,/lrago. 

 The Minister of Public Works at the urgent request of the Board 

 of Longitude has asked of the Chamber a grant of je3,7(>0 for the Ob- 

 servatory at Paris. This sum will serve to erect at the top of the 

 slightly elevated eastern tower of the edifice, a hemispherical turning 

 cap, under which powerful telescopes may be arranged, and applied 

 with exactness to the great astronomical phenomena discovered of 

 late years. The Committee has therefore thought it right to take 

 this occasion for casting a rapid view over the successive improve- 

 ments in the National (Observatory. 



When, a short time after the foundation of the Academy of Sciences, 

 Lewis XIV. determined, at the request of Colbert, to erect the Ob- 

 servatory of Paris, no national establishment of this kind was then in 

 existence. The astronomers in the several countries, confined to their 

 own resources, were obliged to make use of inferior instruments, and 

 to place them in inconvenient and often unstable edifices, and no sys- 

 tematic and regular course could therefore be undertaken or pursued. 

 The plan of erecting our national observatory was fixed in 16G7, and 

 in the month of June the astronomers of the Academy regulated the 

 exact orientations of the several faces of the edifice. The masonry 

 works began only in 16lJ8, and the building was finished on the 14th 

 Sept. 1G71, at a cost of more than two millions of livres, or nearly a 

 hundred thousand pounds. It might have been thought ihat after 

 such an enormous expenditure France would have possessed an ob- 

 servatory wotlhv of science and herself; it was not howeverso. The 

 architect liad laid down the plan of the edifice without sufficiently 

 consulting the observers, and their complaints arrived slowly or were 

 not listened to. Claude Perrault although he had not yet constructed 

 the colonnade of the Louvre, found himself more powerful than all the 

 French astronomers put together, and rejected with pertinacity and 

 hauteur arrangements of which Colbert himself had acknowledged the 

 utility ; he resisted in fact the great minister himself, in order not to 

 break, as he said, the architectonic lines, or produce any interruption 

 to the harmony and regularity of the masses. These idle assertions 

 unhappily carried the day over the well founded provisions and re- 

 marks of men of science, and it is said that that sometimes happens 

 even in our own time. The Committee would show too much severity 

 towards the man of genius to whom Paris owes the Colonnade of the 

 Louvre, if it did not at once state that at the time when Perrault pre- 

 pared himself, by executing the modest edifice of the Faubourg St. 

 Jacques, for tlie works which were to immortalize him, the art of ob- 

 serving had undergone a complete revolution, and that astronomers 

 were by no means agreed as to the uncertainty of the measures of 

 angular height obtained with gnomons. It may be added that very 

 favourable and decided opinions, obtained in Italy from a celebrated 

 authority, asserted the utility of this apparatus, imd also of an interior 

 colossal sun-dial, so that the great rooms now unused in the Paris Ob- 

 servatory, and the heaviness of appearance of the north facade, which 

 has been so severely criticised, must not be laid to the account of the 

 architect alone. 



The eastern tower, left without roofing, and the large room called 

 the meridian room, served to receive the non-achromatic telescopes, 

 16 or 20 yards long, to which observers towards the end of the 17th 

 century resorted when they wished to study the physical constitution 

 of the planets and their satellites. Excited by the singularity of the 

 discoveries witli whicli these large instruments had enriched science, 

 astronomers and opticians endeavouretl to make still larger ones. 

 Some were soon produced very long, and with very large openings. 

 In fact one of them was 98 metres (3U0 French feet or 32 U English) 

 feet in length. Tlie new edifice not being then capable of receiving 

 or supporting them, they were set up in the open air on masts of 

 great height, and in the garden a colossal wooden tower was raised, 

 from the top of which the Marly engine a short time before supplied 

 the water for the reservoirs at Versailles. One experiment in ob- 

 serving was to put the object glass at the upper end of these masts, 

 or of the high tower, the observer holding the eye glass in his hand ; 

 the telescope reduced to these two extreme pieces was therefore 

 without a tube. Difficulties, as might have been foreseen, rendered 

 fruitless tliese essays, the most considerable in the annals of science. 

 It was evident, ii priori, that the observer could not concentrate, with 

 the requisite precision, two crystalline lenses unconnected between 

 themselves by any rigid medium. The necessity of observing, when 

 such apparatus was employed, a few minutes only before the passage 

 of stars to the meridian and a few minutes after would besides have 

 prevented any longcontiiiued and systematic researches. 



The defects inherent in Perrault's edifice became particularly mani- 

 fest at the time when it was felt necessary to apply meridian instru- 



