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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[Apart, 



of spruce modprn houses. Besides, if we must employ Gothic for 

 s\ich purpose, it ought at any rate to bp llie Gothic of a more advanced 

 period -.vnd more otnite species than that wliich is now almost exclu- 

 sivelv employed. The character that is both pleasing and appropriate 

 for a village cluirch is unsnit.ible for one in a town, — that is for one 

 DOW built, and placed where every thing else is quite tomnish, and 

 wiihal, evidently of to-d.iy's growth. Therefore before it is deter- 

 mined upon that a new clnircli shall be Gothic, it would be as well to 

 take into consideration the character of the locality. 



Ill Lnrk certainly has a good deal to do with deciding the reputa- 

 tion and vogue of bail. lings. While some are universally cried up, 

 cliieflv, it would seem, because the higli opinion first expressed of 

 them' has ever since been implicitly adopted, and has been repeated 

 bv every successive writer, and upon every occasion, others of equal 

 ^erit are scarcely spoken of at all. It is the fashion-I can cal it 

 nothine else, to exlol St. Martin's by wholesale, speaking of it in tlie 

 lump IS if not onlv the ;;or/!CO, but the church itself was entitled to 

 admiration, although nothing can be more anti-classical, more un- 

 Corinthian or more at variance with the style of the portico, than is 

 all the rest of the structure, the background of the portico ilself not 

 excepted. There is about as much similarity of character between 

 the body of the edifice and the portico, as existed between Old St. 

 Paul's and the Corinthian colonnade tacked to it by Inigo Jones. On 

 the other hand, St. George's Bloomsbury, which, it may be observed, 

 now forms so fine an architectural object as seen from the line of new 

 street leading from Oxford Street into Holborn,— is never mentioned 

 except for sillv cavilling at its steeple. In regard to those two churches, 

 criticism blows hot and cold with a vengeance: in the one case it 

 willingly slots its eyes to all demerits, tor the sake of the por- 

 tico- iii the other it fixes them so intently upon the statue on the 

 summit of the steeple that it can discern nothing but that "absurdity." 

 The noble pos? of the portico on a stylob.ite of just sufficient height 

 to eive it additional importance,— artistical combination of masses, 

 orieinalitv of character in the ensemble, pl.iy of light and shade, and 

 ner^nective— these excellences are passed over in silence— either most 

 sulkv or most stupid, although of a kind that those who are capable 

 of feeling them would, for their sake, almest have forgiven the architect 

 had he stuck up George II. with his head downwards. But the 

 steeple— well! that campanile is the most classically conceived thing 

 of the kind we possess. In comparison with it, Wren's vaunted 

 steeples are little better than gimcrack : scientifically constructed they 

 may be but in themselves are not worth the skill bestowed upon them. 

 They w'ho admire that of Bow Church, Cheapside, may equally well 



be delighted with the freaks of Borromini, so too, those who are charm 

 ed with that of St. Bride's, ought to be in raptures with a Chinesi 



the wiseacres who can give no better reason for the opinion they hold, 

 or would be thought to hold, than that "Every body has always ad- 

 mired Wren's steeples,"— and— myself excepted— who can resist 

 such powerful argument? t, , , j itt 1 



IV. Not only have critics— that is, such critics as Ralph and Wal- 

 pole i,„d their'Grub-street copyists— depreciated St.George's Blooms- 

 bury but architectural writers, and those who have formed collections 

 of architectural designs fur publications, have been no less unjust. 

 There are no representations of it in the Vitiuvius Britaniucus, none 

 in the Public Buildings of London,— no mention of it orof Hawksmoor 

 in either of the treatises on architecture in Brewster's Encyclopiedia 

 and the Metro|.olitana,althoughvarionsslructures of far less interest and 

 v due are noticed. A somewhat similar fate is that of what, though at- 

 tended Willi considerable drawbacks, it being upon too small a scale to 

 in ike anv figure where it is placed, is on« of the most classical or taste- 

 ful pieces ot design in the whole metropolis, for rarely do we hear the 

 ci-derant Melbourne now Dover House, Whitehall, quoted as a supe- 

 rior specimen of architecture, nor has an elevation <.f it ever been 

 published— at least, I have never met with one. This shows with 

 wh It sort of judgment and taste those who cater for architectural 

 nublicatiuns select subjects for them; and that such a design should 

 h ive have been overlooked bv George Richardson, when he was glad 

 to enlist so many poor, feeble, and crippled things in his New Vitru- 

 vius Britannicus, is perfectly astonishing-or rather would be so, to 

 anv one unacquainted with the triple stolidity of bookmakers. That 

 there should be no published elevation of the beautiful little screen 

 facade of Dover House is the more to be regretted because so repre- 

 sented and therefore seen apart (rora anything else, it would show 

 itself to greater advantage' than it does in reality -merely on account 

 of iu being too diminutive for a piece of street architecture, unless it 



could have been placed so as to be in some measure detached from 

 other objects, and made to form a principal one terminating the vista 

 in a short street ; whereas, facing, as it does, Inigo Jones's Banquet- 

 ting House, it looks Lilliputian, {i.e. literally, little-fcoyish — Swift 

 having formed ihe word from the two Danish ones Lille " little," and 

 Pnlle " a child") ; it looks Lilliputian, I say, by contrast. It is a pity 

 that Holland did not at all events give greater altitude to the portico, 

 by carrying it up higher than the rest of the screen, making the 

 columns there as high as the entire order of the other part; had which 

 been done, bi-sides more variety being given to the general composi- 

 tion, and greater dignity to the portico, the intercolumuiation would 

 have been very greatly improved in consequence of the diameter of 

 the columns being increased in proportion to increase of height; 

 whereas now, being only tetrastyle, the portico looks too wide in front 

 for its height. One particular merit that ought not to be overlooked 

 in it, is the manner in which it is attached to the building — not merely 

 stack up or pushed against it, as is the case with so many other 

 things of the kind, which look as if they were after-thoughts, and 

 added to what was not prepared for them, but firmly knitted together 

 with the part of the front immediately behind it. It is alleged as a 

 fault in the design, by those who have condescended to notice it at all, 

 the two insulated columns with the entablature breaking over them, in 

 the compartments next to the portico, support nothing. There certainly 

 appears to have been no very particular reason for breaking the enta- 

 blature, because there was nothing to hinder its being carried across the 

 inlercolumiis, thereby giving to those parts of the front the appear- 

 ance of blank colonnades — that is, without any passage between the 

 columns and the wall behind them, as is the case with those in the 

 front of the Bank. One reason that was not done may have been that 

 it was thought that those parts would, in such case, have appeared 

 too much like a repetition of the portico, the number of intercolumns 

 being the same, viz. three, in all those three divisions of the front. 

 Nor will I be sure that as now placed, with he entablature breaking 

 over them, and surmounted by a vase, those columns do not tell more 

 decidedly in the composition, and produce a more piquant effect than 

 they else would have done. At all events they are picturesque, and 

 if they show themselves to be no more than architectural embellish- 

 ments of no positive use, they have the merit of being strikingly or- 

 namental, which is very much more than can be said of a great many 

 things which though intended only for decoration, and very costly into 

 the bargain, produce scarcely any effect at all. To object to what is 

 here done chiefly because the order employed is Greek instead of 

 Roman in its character and details, is liypercriticism in its dotage, for 

 the absurdity — if absurdity it is — would have been just the same in 

 the other case. Had Holland intended — as be most assuredly did not 

 — to pass off this facade as an exact example of Greek composition, and 

 veritable Greek application of columns, he would of course have been 

 guilty of a very strange error. The adoption of the Greek style in 

 regard to matters of detail, does not impose upon us the obligation of 

 confining ourselves to the Greek practice in all other respects ; or if it 

 does, there is no alternative for us but to discard that style at once, as 

 one wholly insufficient for our practice, and one which it is impossible 

 to keep up with any sort of consistency if we are to abide by the 

 mere letter of it, instead of endeavouring to catch the spirit of it, and 

 infuse kindied eloquence of taste into features and combinations un- 

 known to Grecian architecture. In fact, unless we admit of some 

 latitude in the application of columns, and the introduction of them 

 for ornament and effect in composition, we ought in consistency to 

 tolerate no columnar architecture at all that does not strictly conform 

 to the severity of Greek principles as exhibited in Greek temples. 

 If we are to stick to principles, the style or particular fashion of the 

 building affords no excuse for transgressing them, and for employing 

 columns and orders of Roman or Italian character after what we hold 

 to be an unpardonably solecistical manner, when in lieu of them we 

 make use of Greek ones. Therefore, if what Holland has done with so 

 much artistic feeling, with insulated Greek Ionic columns in the fa9ade 

 of Dover House, is to be censured as a license quite inexcusable, not- 

 withstanding the beautiful effect attending it, neither ought Inigo's 

 fafade on the opposite side of the street to escape reprobation as 

 being radically soiesistical, and composed on principles quite contrary 

 to those of legitimate columnar aichitecture, and also for exhibiting 

 inicrostyle orders and supercoluraniation. However, it is some com- 

 fort to find that even such scrupulous souls as are scandalized at Hol- 

 land's felicitous heresy can endure, without wry faces, the far more 

 monstrous and tasteless heresy of sticking up a single huge polar 

 column, or pole in the shape of a column, for no other purpose than to 

 hoistastitue on the top of it; — how conveniently elastic are some 

 folks' architectural principles! 



V. A third building which has obtained far less notice than it de- 

 serves — in fact, has hardly ever been noticed at all, is that called the 



