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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND AUCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[Sept. 



larly as to his mode of making his buildings rise from the earth with judi- 

 cious basements — not brcakin;: abruptly from it, as if it had no foundation 

 or connexion with the plot Uj in which it stands. 



Vanbrugh was a bold and erratic genius in his art, picturesque and poetical 

 in his imagination ; rather resembling the painter-architects of Henry the 

 Eighth's time, than a follower of Palladio, Jones, or Wren. lilenheim, near 

 Woodstock in Oxfordshire, one of the best of his works, and the most 

 characteristic of his peculiar style, was began in 1705. It was intended as 

 a tribute of a grateful nation to their illustrious soldier, but servile intriguer, 

 the Duke of Marlhorougb, and was named after the greatest of bis victories. 

 The secret history of this transaction forms m\ amusing feature in D'Israeli's 

 " Anecdotes of Literature ;" but appertains more to the political intrigues 

 than to the architectural history of our country. 



In this period arose those prominent ornaments of our metropolis, the 

 churches of St. Mary-le-Strand and St. Martin's in the Fields, from the 

 designs of James Gibbs, who also finished that of St. Clements Danes, 

 begun by Wren. Gibbs was an architect of the school of Wren, but affected 

 by laborious detail and superabundance of ornament — as may be seen in his 

 works, particularly in the interior of the church of St. Martin — what Wren 

 accomplished by more simple and scientific means. The exterior of ^t. 

 Mary-le-Strand is of two orders in height, which presupposes two stories to 

 the interior— a fault committed by Jones in his Banqueting-house, White- 

 hall ; and by Wren in his St. Paul's cathedral. The former has for an 

 apology, that his building was part and parcel of an enormous palace, and 

 corresponded with such portions of it that had two stories, and this required 

 the omission of one for height in the interior. For Wren it may be said, 

 that his two stories of coupled columns in the western front, have nearly the 

 same proportions of one ; and that viewing his cathedral from a distance — 

 the best position for seeing its beauties — the lower order is entirely concealed 

 from view by the houses that surround it. The circular portico in the 

 western front of Gibbs's church in the Strand, is a palpable and clumsy 

 imitation of Wren's beautiful serai-rotunda to the north and south transepts 

 of St. Paul's. The summit of its cupola was to have been surmounted by a 

 farthingaled statue of Queen Anne, somewhat like that horrible monstrosity 

 in St. Paul's churchyard, for which was substituted the present funereal 

 vase. 



The exterior of St. Martin's in the Fields is in a bolder style and purer 

 taste. The columns in antis, or, to speak less technically, the columns 

 between the anta; or pilasters, that form the retrocessed porticoes of the 

 north and south aisles, are both novel and effective ; and the Corinthian 

 hexastyle portico of the western end would be unexceptionable, were it not 

 for the cumbrous steeple that bears down its apex. No such monstrosity 

 disfigures any of Wren's churches, whose steeples always rise from external 

 and visible towers. The interior looks fine from a redundancy of ornament 

 — divested of which, it would degenerate into common-place. It is, how- 

 ever, a large and commodious edifice, well adapted to the parochial church 

 service of the establishment ; the arrangement of which. Chambers did not 

 disdain to imitate in his German Lutheran church in the Savoy, near 

 Waterloo bridge. 



Of Gibbs's other work, the Ratcliffe library, Oxford, it can only be called a 

 practical blunder ; for devoid of the necessary scientific skill in construction 

 that is requisite to complete the character of an architect, he intended to 

 have executed the cupola with stone, but it would not stand : it was obliged, 

 therefore, to be taken down and to be built of lath and plaster. 



Gibbs published a treatise on the " Elements of Architecture," which pos- 

 sesses nothing new, and is to be considered more as a student's guide to draw- 

 ing the five orders of Italian architecture according to that master's propor- 

 tions—which are not sufficiently correct to be considered as models — than a 

 treatise on the art of which he aspires to be a teacher. 



The state of architecture at the end of the reign of George II., and for 

 some time previous thereto, had been as low as at almost any period of the 

 English history. From the death of Kent and the great Earl of Burlington, 

 two accomplished architects of the Anglo-Palladian school, to the commence- 

 ment of the reign of George III., we have no account of any native architect 

 worthy of notice. The profession seemed almost to have been lost ; and 

 new buildings, repairs, and alterations, to have been performed by that 

 anomalous being, that sort of uno-dual mixture of artist and artisan, the 

 building surveyor, or surveyor and builder, as he generally termed himself. 



The school of architects which ended with Hawksmoor, had left no dis- 

 ciples, and the only one who can lay claim to the name was Archer, whom 

 Walpole describes as holding the office of groom-porter in the royal palaces. 



The church of St. John the Evangelist, Westminster, which has been falsely 

 attributed to Vanbrugh, is characterised by a hold originality in its quadri- 

 frontal form, of an Italian-Doric order, surmounted by four Corinthian turrets. 

 It has been ludicrously compared by Swift, or some other satirist, to an ele- 

 phant on its back, or a huge butcher's block reversed, with its clumsy legs 

 rising upwards. But had it been finished as intended, with a lofty cupola or 

 lantern in the centre, it would have had a different and perhaps a good 

 eff.!ct. 



As an example of the state of architecture and its patrons at this period, 

 may be cited the fact, that when the corporation of London proposed building 

 a mansion-house for the official residence of their lord mayors. Lord Bur. 

 lington submitted to them an elegant design by Palladio, which the citizens 

 rejected as being the work of a foreigner and a papist, and executed the pre- 

 sent building from a design of the elder Mr. Dance, who was both a citizen 

 and a Protestant. This architect has been said to have been originally a 

 ship.builder, and the two lofty attics that were formerly over the Egyptian- 

 hall and the ball-room have been sarcastically compared, from this circum- 

 stance, to the bulk-heads or poops of a deeply-laden Indiaman. The plan is 

 well arranged for the purposes it was built for ; some of the apartments are 

 magnificent, though somewhat heavy in style, and there is no feature in any 

 part of it but what may be traced to some of the then existing books on 

 Italian architecture. The Corinthian orders of the portico and of the Egyp- 

 tian-hall have more the character of the Stadt-bouse at Amsterdam, than 

 those of any of the fair cities of Italy ; and the whole building bears more 

 affinity to the Batavian than to the Italian style of architecture. 



Dance was, however, a man of some genius, and exhibited much skill in 

 his churches of Bishopsgate and Slioreditch. The Roman-Doric portico of 

 the latter is as well proportioned and as happily applied as any similar struc- 

 ture in the metropolis. The spire, though inelegantly placed behind the 

 portico, which occasions its tower or basement to be hidden, and gives it the 

 appearance of being mounted on the roof, is a free and successful imitation 

 of Wren's St. Mary-le-Bow, and is one of the handsomest spires in London, 

 The deeply indented scotia that supports the terminating obelisk is boldly 

 original, is productive of a fine effect, and could only have been executed by 

 a man of science. The bodies of both these churches present the appearance 

 that their author had studied his Vitruvius in a Dutch translation, 



Hogarth has satirised the want of architectural taste in England at this 

 period in one of his inimitable pictures of Marriage a la Mode, where the 

 portico of the mansion in progress for the noble father of the bridegroom, 

 is formed of five columns, the middle one being under the apex of the pedi- 

 ment. The satirist little dreamt that his pointed ridicule would find an 

 imitator, yet it is so, for the architect, if so he may be called, of Bedford- 

 square, has on two of its sides perpetrated the atrocity of a sham portico of 

 five attached pilasters, the middle one being after the mode of Hogarth's 

 architect — under the apex of the pediment. 



Batty Langley who flourished about this time, had a school or academy of 

 architecture, but his disciples were all carpenters ; and although his taste as 

 an architect was deservedly derided, he formed a school of excellent work- 

 men, and gave form to many a skilful artisan in a certain line of art. 



Emlyn, in an after age, attempted the forlorn hope of inventing a new 

 order of architecture, as if those of Greece and Rome and Italy were not 

 sufficient for the grasp of his capacious mind. He used oak leaves instead 

 of acanthus or parsley for foliage, the star of the order of the garter for the 

 rosette between the volutes; the shaft was single, one-third of its height, 

 where it divided itself into two, like a forked elm, and terminated of course 

 with twin capitals. He was permitted to dedicate his book, entitled 

 " Emlyn's New Order of Architecture," to George HI., who with 

 that good nature which always characterised that monarch's patronage of 

 artists, allowed him to execute a specimen of his biforked " British order," 

 at Windsor: but I believe it has been removed. 



Batty Langley however soared higher, for he published his invention of no 

 fewer than five new orders, namely. The Gothic Tuscan! The Gothic 

 Doric ! ! The Gothic Ionic .' .' .' The Gothic Corinthian ! J ! ! and The Gothic 

 Composite .'!.'! ! The principal novelties were making the shafts of the 

 columns treble, quadruple, and quintuple, clustered and banded like the 

 pillars of our ancient cathedrals, making the tops of the tnglyphs pointed like 

 lancet windows, the friezes coved and filled with frets, and other equal ab- 

 surd alterations. Some specimens of these " Gothic orders of my invention" 

 were, and perhaps are, to he seen in a street near the north-east corner of 

 St. James's-park,— Fludyer-street, I think. 



During this state of transition, several elegant and substantial mansions ot 



