184 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[May, 



in ThracP. . . But f.ysidps will appp.ir (o you lo liave assumed a 

 little more tliau llie privilegps of a travfller.in ichitinglliat the people 

 have so impprt'ect a sense of religion as to bury tlif dead in the tem- 

 ples of the Gods, and the priests so avaricious and sliamcless as to 

 claim money for the permission of this impiety. . . He told us 

 furtliermore of a conqueror to whom a column has been erected, sixty 

 cubils high, supporting his effigy in marble I Imagine the general of 

 ail army standing upon a column of sixty cubits to show himself! A 

 crane might do it after a victory over a pigmy; or it might aptly re- 

 represent the virtues of a rope-dancer, exhibiting how little he was 

 subject to dizziness. 1 will write no more about it, for I begin to 

 think that some pretty Thracian lias given poor I^ycides a love potion, 

 and that it lias affected his brain a little. . . . 



"The mistake is really ludicrous. The column, you must have 

 perceived at once, was erected not to display the victor but the van- 

 quished. A blunder very easy for an idle traveller to commit. Few 

 of the Thracians, I conceive, even in the interior, are so utterly igno- 

 rant of Grecian arts as to raise a statue at such a height above the 

 ground, that the vision shall not comprehend all the features easily, 

 and the spectator see and contemplate tlie object of his admiration as 

 nearly, and in the same position, as he was used to dc in the Agora." 

 —Pericles and ^-Ispasia, 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK. 

 FASCICULUS LXIV. 



" I must have liberty 

 ■Withal, as large a charter as the winds, 

 To blow on whom 1 please." 



I. Among all those who have extolled St. Stej)heii's Walbrook, not 

 one has adverted to a circumstance which is certainly not a little in 

 its favour, although passed over as if it were either quite a matter ot 

 course, or else nowise affected the building. Nevertheless it is one 

 ■which constitutes a marked difference between that and Wren's ether 

 churches, or, indeed, nearly all other churches here. And now, hav- 

 ing said this I ought to leave iiecple to find out what it is, which any 

 one who has been in the building, or has seen a view of the interior 

 ought to be able to do instantly. It would be but a poor compliment 

 to their sagacity to attempt to help them out any farther in discover- 

 ing what is at once so obvious and so simple; still, lest 1 set their 

 wits rambling quite wide of the mark, I must, I suppose, say in plain 

 terms what is the circumstance I allude to ; therefore, all that it is, is 

 that the church is not blocked up with galleries, — wherefore it is 

 strikingly distinguished from others of the same period. While this 

 has been overlooked, the merit of the plan has, on the contrary, been 

 overrated, since the latter is marked rather by irregularity than by 

 symmetry of arrangement, it forming neither a Greek cross nor a 

 Latin one, nor a simple square with the columns supporting the dome 

 iascribed within it equidistantly from every side. That exact regu- 

 larity, which the architect appears to have aimed atas his leading idea, 

 is just missed; the dome is neither over the centre of the plan nor 

 over a'distinctlv pronounced divi^ionof it, tl'.e porlion at the west end 

 — if end it mav be called — being much too short for the character of 

 nave. Moreover, instead of being regulated by the intercolunmiation 

 of the order, whereby the space between the columns and walls on the 

 north and south sides would have been the same as at tlie east end, 

 those parts are not above half the width, which occasions not only a 

 want of correspondence between them and the rest, but also a crowded 

 appearance. The want of pilasters against those walls, to receive the 

 ends of the entablatures extending from the columns, is, if not a posi- 

 tive defect in itself, a serious deficiency as regards consistency of de- 

 coration. Even the effect of the dome is greatly impaired iii com- 

 parison with what it would have been, if instead of the present small 

 lantern there had been a glazed aperture of such diameter astoafford 

 sufficient light to the whole of the space bi'neath, if not the whole, 

 church. In that case another good effect woulil liave resulted, because 

 all the windows, except perha|is those of the clerestory or over the 

 entablature, might have been dispensed with,— and they are so very 

 far from being ornamental as to be absuhite blemishes, — so ordinary and 

 vulgar-looking as to be in utter contradiction w ith classicality of style. 

 Those apertures, moreover, exhibit no fewer than five different shapes 

 and sizes, including a series of oval holes fit only for a stable or rooms 

 in a garret. — However, I do not wish to put folk in a passion: those 

 who think that 1 have most unwarrantably slandered this masterpiece 

 of architecture, may take their revenge by proving that what I have 

 uoipted out as defects are only .so many beauties. Were ihey to do 



that they might Piilighteii many others besides myself, lor I have 

 never yet met with any one who did not confess sub rosd that he 

 thought St. Stephen's WuUbrook had been praised greatly beyond its 

 deserts. 



II. The writer of the article on Ecclesiastical Architecture in the last 

 number of the Quarteily Review, might have expressed his opinion of 

 the church of La Madeleine atParis somewhat more in the tone of criti- 

 cism than by applying to it the merely abusive and not very precise 

 term of " a monstrosity," — the very one almost of all others with which 

 it cannot be leproached archiltdurally, since so far from being a mon- 

 strosity as a building, it is singularly correct and classical, nothing 

 either more nor less than a direct transfer or cast from an antique 

 Corinthian peristyles, nearly free from any modern alloy. Of course 

 the interior does not profess to be strictly in the same manner, because 

 for that there was no direct precedent to be followed, and it was neces- 

 sary to accommodate it to the express purpose of the building, but the 

 difference does not amount to anv positive incongruity or " inconse- 

 quence" of style, it being no more tlian what amounts to a natural and 

 almost necessary distinction between internal and external character 

 and design. Some credit besides is due to the manner in which all 

 internal accommodation has been secured, without any sacrifice of ex- 

 ternal beauty or unity of expression. That the exterior is a truly 

 beautiful object must be admitted, unless all received theories and 

 opinions are now to be upset and reversed; since it fully realizes, 

 upon an imposing scale and in a worthy shape, the ideal of Greek 

 architectural beauty. Yet although on the score of beauty it may be 

 perfectly safe from reproach, it is open to the allegation of being false 

 in expression — avowedly putting on and even ostentatiously parading 

 the semblance of a pagan temple. Either then ought we to abandon 

 the idea of adopting in its purity what has ever been considered the 

 perfection of that style — the temple fcrm of the Greeks, or we must 

 apply it to places of religious worship. To object to such par- 

 ticular form for the mass of the structure, and also to the style, 

 as partaking of paganism, is sheer prudery: columns, entablatures, 

 pediments are indifferently at the service of all religious and all sects. 

 Almost as well might we call stone and marble pagan materials, and 

 restrict ourselves to the use of brick and timber alone for churches. 

 Besides, of all false creeds and doctrines there is the very least danger 

 from paganism. So utterly is the paganism of the Greeks extinct, 

 that wdiat in the early Christians was a natural abhorrence as of a foe 

 to be resisted and overcome, would now be imbecile dread of an 

 enemv after he had actually been slain. A convincing proof how 

 little abhorrence the early Christians felt respecting pagan architec- 

 ture is, that the earliest types of Christian architecture were essen- 

 tially pagan in their origin. 



III. If it be merely the misapplication of style and unsuitableness 

 of character that the Quarterly Reviewer condemns in the Madeleine, 

 lie ought to have qualified his censure by explaining himself to that 

 effect. Considered merely aesthetically, without reference to purpose, 

 the structure cannot possibly be called a " monstrosity," — certainly not 

 without stigmatizing by the same injurious epithet a great number of 

 others which have hitherto been marked for admiration, although in- 

 finitely more hybrid in their composition, and more medley and motley 

 in the taste they display. With far greater propriety of language 

 might the Reviewer have characterized by such epithet very many of 

 the basilicas and other ancient ecclesiastical edifices, of which his 

 paper gives us an interesting historical muster. Of course neither 

 historicd nor archiEological interest — which frequently gives such 

 value and importance to things intrinsically devoid of beauty — at- 

 taches at present to the Madeleine, yet that is no reason for passing 

 summary and unqualified condemnation upon it. A critic interested 

 in the subject might at least have pointed out, for our instruction, — 

 had it been only in a foot-note — what constitutes the monstrosity com- 

 plained of, and in what respect the building is at variance with the 

 purpose lor which it was erected, and deficient in that expression 

 which a Roman Catholic church of the nineteenth century, should pos- 

 sess. Neither would it have been amiss had he let us known whether 

 he be better satisfied with t,hose other modern churches which have 

 been lately erected in professed imitation of the ancient basilica plan, 

 viz., Notre Dame de Lorette, and St. Vincent de Paul at Paris, and 

 the so-called Basilica at Munich. It would have been worth while 

 for him lo have dwelt even somewhat at length on those modern in- 

 stances, (giving at the same time explanatory plans of them — only 

 three iu addition to the illustrations of the kind wdiich enrich the arti- 

 cle in the Quarterly), in order to satisfy us whether the adoption of 

 such type have been attended with decided improvement upon the 

 former system of modern continental church-architecture, and if so, 

 wdiether the improvement has been carried to the fullest extent. 



IV. Not the Madeleine alone, but the Walhalla and Canova's Greco- 

 Roman church ut Possagno, must, it may now be presumed, be set 



