80 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[March, 



tliPtnselves and the Competitors. And have those gentlemen now not 

 a single syllable to offer in their defence ? — cannot they even attempt 

 to explain away the untoward circumstances against them ? — cannot 

 thev even muster up logic enough among them all to convince the 

 world that black is white, and fraud and deception become virtues 

 when they can plead "benefit of clergy" ? And the Competitors? — 

 do they now intend to let the mutter drop, like good easy people, in- 

 stead of making such an example of those Oxford Dons as would 

 prove a most wholesome warning to all future Committees? — Let us 

 hope not. Every one of them ought to bring his action at law for 

 Breach of Contract. 



Unless the grievances arising out of Competition are chiefly ima- 

 ginary, — unless there is a good deal of unfairness in imputing unfair 

 dealing to Competition as generally managed, the profession ought to 

 do what they have scarcely tried to do \n any shape — take up the 

 matter bodily as a body ; and were they really hearty and unanimous 

 in doing so, they would no doubt be able to devise means of putting a 

 stop to the abuses complained of; whereas at present, while com- 

 plaints proceed only from individuals, and from parties immediately 

 interested in the respective particular cases, the silence of the pro- 

 fession, and of the " Institute," as its representative, looks very much 

 like acquiescence in the actual system of Competition, without the 

 slightest desire for any reform in it. 



I remain, &c. 



Btstakder. 



THE CHURCH AND THE CAMDENISTS. 



Sir, — Bigotry and ultra-intolerance are stated by your spirited 

 correspondent "Z Z," in the May number of the Civil Engineer 

 and Architect's Journal, to have taken hold of the " Cambridge 

 Camden Society," and to have diffused their imperative and limited 

 policy into all their works, their conceptions, and their reasonings 

 — if reasoning it can be called. Docs it not show a very narrow, 

 weak, and clouded imagination to suppose that classical elegance 

 or beauty is not elegance and beauty, because it is pagan, be- 

 cause it did not emanate from monkish ignorance cngendeied in the 

 dark cells of superstition? This must be bigotry and intolerance 

 with a vengeance ; the greatest slavery to which the human mind can 

 be bowed down to. In this enlightened raiUvay period of intelligence 

 and knowledge, it would hardly be thought that Englishmen could be 

 found of such truly perverted intellect, but I perceive their influence 

 is extending into the midland counties of England, through the in- 

 strumentality of the clergy — a pious race. At Bronley, a parish in 

 Shropshire, containing nearly 5000 inhabitants, where the recent in- 

 cumbent, a sprig of nobility who has taken upon himself the cure 

 of souls — the old church, which contained 1000 to 1200 persons, 

 and which from the period of its first existence, having been rebuilt 

 in 1701, and would have stood for 150 years longer, and was always 

 considered too large, was under the plea of its being too small, and 

 being "a hard church to preach in," pulled down and a Gothic struc- 

 ture erected in its place at a cost of 7 or £S,000, contrary to the 

 strong feelings and desires of [the greater portion of the parishioners. 

 To have built a Grecian structure I should conceive would have given 

 it a tincture of Paganism ; therefore, instead of constructing a building 

 on strict mathematical principles, which would be found efficacious in 

 conveying the words of the minister uninterrupted to the ears of the 

 congregation, and making it of practical utility, it has been deemed 

 right — if right it can be called — to build it upon one of the clumsiest 

 and pillar-crowded forms they could select ; and this for no other 

 reason — not as I observe of utility, a vile or useless cause in these 

 times, nor taste — but in consequence of the rage for following our 

 forefathers, men clouded and swayed by excessive ignorance, men 

 just emerging from the darkness and gloom of benighted reason, in the 

 early dawn of bewildered knowledge, without est.iblished order or 

 consistency. Thus these persons scoff, with their presuming know- 

 ledge, the extensive learning and science of the present illuminated 

 and illuminating period, and rush with a reckless ardour to embrace 

 the offspring of bigotry and superstition which a morbid appetite for 

 novelty demands. 



Referring to the different remarks you have made on the Eccle- 

 siologist in the Journal for 1844, pp. 440, 441 — it is there noted 

 that "the restoration of the rood screen being determined upon;" 

 " the restoration of stalls," and other paraphernalia of Catholicism. 

 Were not these the remains of papacy ? and are the members of a 

 reformed church, which still wants reforming, to fall into the old, 

 discarded, and contemptible rites and ceremonies? are they to be re- 

 novated, which have fallen and have been thrust away by the force of 



reason, wisdom and experience, to be again reared up and promulgated 

 as the only mode of worship? 'Tis sophistry and a blind hallucination 

 with the prostration of the best faculties of man. The quotations 

 found in the pages above referred to — from this sacred work of the 

 Camden Society — are truly laughable, such as "cast-iron stoves are 

 inadmissible" — for why ? because the poverty und ignorance of our 

 early forefathers could not procure them ; whilst the simple, sickly, 

 childish twaddle of their effects " to stifle the sickly, scorch the strong, 

 amuse the irreverent, &c. &c.," is just as reasonable as to say you shall 

 not use carpets upon your drawing-room floors, but litter them down, 

 as in the days of Elizabeth, with straw or with rushes. Then the idea 

 of" a simple ring of iron, the size and kind of which encircles a coach 

 wheel," to be filled with fire from a furnace is admirable. tern- 

 pora! mores / From such mentors, or such noodles, the Lord de- 

 fend me and all her Majesty's lieges. 

 I am, Sir, 



Yours very respectfully, 

 December, Zith, 1S14. A. B. 



NEW BUILDINGS ACT. 



Sir, — The Metropolitan Buildings Act has now come into operation, 

 and of all the bungling Acts which ever were patched up by the con- 

 cocters of laws this surely is the worst, nor can some of its very useful 

 provisions, loaded as they are with everything to stultify them, redeem 

 it from this deserved censure. My present purpose is to name only 

 one of these which now affects me personally. 



My house not being large enough for my family and business (while 

 as the situation suits me, and I and my business are well known here 

 I desire to stay), I have long been negociating for a renewal of my 

 lease, and have just now succeeded, aniler a covenant to extend my 

 house over a part of my yard; so far all is satisfactory, and my sur- 

 veyor was desired to lay down plans for the work. But, alas, a short 

 time since a butcher set up his trade in an adjoining street, and in 

 spite of the remonstrances of the neighbourhood, and every means in 

 their power to prevent it, he has established his slaughter house in 

 the rear. Tlie bellowing of his cattle and the stink of his offal has 

 already driven away the best of my neighbours, who are not, like 

 myself, bound to the spot. 



An act of parliament framed expressly to abate nuisances ought 

 surely to have provided a remedy for so great an evil, and this act 

 has done so ivith a vengeance by inflicting a heavy penalty — on whom 

 think you? On the party committing the nuisance of course, you will 

 say. But no, the penalty falls entirely on his unfortunate neighbours, 

 and on me among them, while he himself, the cause of the injury, 

 laughs at us in his sleeve and goes scot free. As if the nuisance I 

 complain of was not enough, I am not allowed to enjoy even my own. 

 By clause 55 he is allowed to remain, while as his slaughter house is 

 already within 50 feet of the back front of my house, I cannot enlarge 

 it without violating the same clause, prohibiting any dwelling house 

 to be erected within the prescribed distance under a penalty of i£50 

 per day, and so I am compelled to remain in a house too small for my 

 family in order to oblige a neighbour in continuing his imisance. I 

 know but one thing like this, and that occurred a few years since at a 

 police oflice — where a party was convicted of an offence against a 

 statute, and in which on such conviction one half the penally was to be 

 assigned to the king and one half to the informer, ulien, to the grati- 

 fication of the convicted and the consternation of the informer, the 

 only penalty was found to be a month's imprisonment and the pillory 

 — so much for modern legislation. I might fill a quire with similar 

 absurdities in this new act, which must be either repealed or greatly 

 modified ere long. 



I am. Sir, 



Your very obedient servant, 



February lOtk, 1S45. A Sufferer. 



FiBE Damp Alarum. — At the Academic des Sciences, at Paris, M. Chuart'a 

 invention was explained, it consists of a bail or globe, contained in a chemical solution 

 highly sensible to any deterioration of the atmosphere, and acting upon a lever, which sets 

 an index in motion, and thus shows the vitiated state of the atmosphere, whether in a 

 mine or elsewhere, long before the common air can be so saturated with gas as to explode 

 on the application of lii;ht. M. Chuart has added to his invention an alarum bell, which 

 is struck by the lever when the ball is thrown off its equilibrium by the vitiated state of 

 the atmosphere, bince M, Chuart hrst exhibited his apparatus he has made a great im- 

 provement. His ball was originally of glass, which was not only too heavy, but also liable 

 to breakage. He now makes it of topper, so very thin that its weight is almost nominal, 

 and yet it is perfect in every part, It is stated that he arrived at this perfection by means 

 of the galvanic process, which gives a thinner substance than any mechanical means could 

 effect consistently with the compactness that is required for the certain operation of the 

 apparatus. 



