J847.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECPS JOURNAL. 



271 



considerable dimensions were erected in various parts of the country. Wan- 

 stead-house, a splendid edifice, with a magnificent Corinthian portico and 

 extensive wings, worthy the name of a palace, was built by the opulent and 

 plebeian family of the Longs ; and has since been torn down, its pictures, 

 statues, and materials sold, and the park disforested of its lofty oaks, by an 

 aristocratic parvenu, who married and illtreated the last heiress of the Tilney 

 Longs. Harewood-house, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, one of the residences of 

 the noble family of Lascelles, is a fine imitation, without being a servile copy 

 of the mansion at Wanstead, but with the advantages of a fine situation, and 

 of being surrounded by a truly princely demesne, and commanding some of 

 the finest views in the country. The mansion of the late Sir Gregory Page, 

 at Blackheath, a truly Palladian villa, on a vast scale, was too extensive for 

 the fortunes of his successors, and met the fate of Wanstead-house. Some 

 others, possessing no originality of character, were erected about this time 

 some of them from the designs of Giovano Battista Leoni, an Italian archi- 

 tect of skill and taste ; the best of these are recorded, with plans, elevations, 

 and sections, in the " Vitruvius Britannlcus" of Colin Campbell, himself an 

 architect of industry and talent. 



Such was the state of architecture when George III. ascended the throne 

 of his German ancestors, neither of whom loved art or literature, and one of 

 whom could see no merit in the transcendant works of Hogarth, and abused 

 him for ridiculing, as he said, his German guards in the celebrated picture of 

 " The march to Finchley ;" this offence the painter revenged by dedicating 

 the print to Frederick the Great of Prussia. Nor could he discover any genius 

 in Garrick, but talked German and took snuff while the British Roscius was 

 illustrating Shakspeare's Richard the Third; but rose, commanded silence, 

 and made an obeisance to the low-comedy actor who personated the lord 

 mayor, saying, " Gentlemen, we must pay respect to my lord mayor." Such 

 were the military goths who had the art, literature, and science of the king- 

 dom, in an enlightened age, at their command. 



Frederic, Prince of Wales, father of George III. received an English educa- 

 tion, was a mild gentlemanly man of no great abilities, but possessed a real 

 love for the amenities of literature and art. He patronised Thomson and 

 Gay, and his little court was divested of the rougher manners of his father's. 

 He was upon ill terms with his father, did not live happily with his wife, 

 a princess of coarse mind and manners, and died young. The education of 

 his son was thus left to the care of his mother, who neglected the more 

 solid parts of his studies, and applied the money entrusted to her for that 

 purpose to her own pleasures. 



King George lit., fortunately for the arts, and particularly architecture, 

 was endowed with an innate love for such pursuits which soften and improve 

 the human mind. He was also well acquainted, for a prince, with both the 

 theory and practice of the graphic arts. When Prince of Wales, he studied 

 architecture, under Mr. Chambers, and was taught to delineate its propor- 

 tions with accuracy from the rules of Palladio and Vitruvius. From the be- 

 fore-mentioned circumstances, there was no Englishman who practised archi- 

 tecture as a profession. Chambers, who had been a naval oflicer, was partial 

 to the art, and had travelled in countries where architecture was better un- 

 derstood than in England. The young Prince also studied the science of 

 perspective, under Mr. William Kirhy, whose practical work, founded on the 

 theories of Dr. Brook Taylor, was formerly in much esteem, and has obtained 

 great celebrity from Hogarth's sarcastic frontispiece of faults likely to occur 

 from the want of a knowledge of that science. Prince George contributed , 

 it is said, a design for his tutor's work ; and his drawings are reported, by 

 persons who had seen them, and they were extant in the royal library in the 

 late Buckingham-house a few years since, to have been correct in detail, 

 and, for their day and style of art, tasteful and elegant. 



George III. ascended the throne of Great Britain with more advantages 

 than most of his predecessors. Born and educated an Englishman, he gloried, 

 as he said in his first speech from the throne, in the name of a Briton. Un- 

 practised in the cruel scenes of warfare, he had been bred in peaceful retire- 

 ment — perhaps too recluse for the government of a nation then involved in 

 such momentous transactions. He loved art, was fond of literature, particu. 

 larly that of his own country, was sliglitly skilled in music, and read Shak- 

 speare with propriety and enthusiasm. A speech from the throne, delivered 

 in correct and elegant English, was a novelty unknown to almost all its audi- 

 tors. The exclamation of Quin, the tragedian, who had been his master in 

 elocution, and was admitted to a place in the House of Lords to witness the 

 debut of his royal pupil, of " Bravo ! I taught the boy," was more sincere 

 than courtly. Artists and literary men were no longer huffed for their in- 

 trusion into the palace, nor debarred the royal presence. Chambers was 

 appointed to th« office of royal architect. Ramsay, a well known portrait 



painter, was employed to depict the youthful sovereign and bis consort ; 

 other artists and their interests were attended to, and the management of 

 the academy, or association of artists, in St. Martins- lane, began by Ho- 

 garth, Thornhill, and others, was patronised, and its concerns investigated. 

 The king coacerned himself even with their little quarrels, and suggested 

 measures for the enlargement of its utility ; it being then merely a school of 

 adult artists, for the study of the human figure, and not an academy of the 

 fine arts, which the king desired to see established in England. It had, 

 however, its series of annual public exhibitions of the works of its members, 

 which the king duly honoured regularly with his presence. 



Chambers, from the circumstance of being the royal architect, and repairs 

 and additions to the royal palaces being necessary, had more interviews with 

 his royal master than others ; and their former relations of master and pupil , 

 bad given more than usual freedom of intercourse to these interviews. The 

 king designed to establish a Royal Academy of painting, sculpture, and 

 architecture, upon the plan of those founded by the illustrious Colbert and 

 Cardinal Richelieu in France, and to build a palace for its occupation. The 

 king entered into this grand project, and Chambers became the organ of 

 communication between him and the leading artists of the day upon this 

 important subject. 



Having now adopted architecture as a profession, and being a Chevalier of 

 the order of the Polar Star, his royal master honoured him with English 

 knighthood, when such an honour was more rare than in later days. Hence 

 the origin of the Royal Academy of the fine arts and the building of Somer- 

 set-house. 



Sir William Chambers threw no new lights on the art over which he was 

 destined to preside. In its practice and more scientific department of con- 

 struction he was, comparatively with such men as Wren and Hawksmoor, 

 totally ignorant. His taste was Roman, and, being unacquainted with the 

 sublimer beauties of Grecian art, was consequently less refined; yet his works 

 have a chastened correctness of detail of the best style of Italian art. He is 

 less exuberant than Scamozzi, Serlio, and Borromini, and even than Palladio 

 himself, except in his very best examples. He may be called the Palladio 

 riformato of the Georgian era. In the course of his travels he had visited 

 parts of China, and published a treatise on the gardening and architecture 

 of that strange people. The royal gardens of Kew and its lofty pagoda 

 are among the results of the Chinese phantasy that he had inflicted on his 

 royal master, and led to the introduction of that fanciful and inelegant 

 style. Yet the Somerset-house of this architect has many redeeming beauties, 

 and his work on " Civil Architecture," in spite of bad taste in reviling the 

 architecture of ancient Greece, of which be knew nothing,abound3with50und 

 doctrines, and is the best elementary work that we possess. A new edition, 

 remarkably well edited by the late John Buonarotti Papworth, whose recent 

 death, full of years and honour, the profession have to deplore, was pub- 

 lished a few years since, and also a smaller one, with a treatise on " Grecian 

 Architecture," by Mr. Joseph Gwilt. 



The establishment of the Royal Academy by George III. is the next great 

 epoch in the arts of this count. y, after the fire of London, and will form the 

 subject of the next section. 



CTo be continued.J 



RAILWAY LEGISLATION, ACCIDENTS, AND INSPECTION. 



A paper was published some short time ago, to show that if it had not 

 been for the operation of prejudice, we might have been in as full posses- 

 sion of the railway system in 1817 as 1847, and that we had spent some 

 half century in keeping back and thwarting improveraeats. Much the 

 same kind of thing might be said of railway legislation : at this date we 

 are fighting for the same points as we have been for years. Surely no 

 bantling ever suffered so much from officious nurses than has the railway 

 system ; never were bandages, rollers, and go-carts more unmercifully 

 applied to hinder, under the name of fostering, growth. 



The pages of our Journal will show that we have always stood up 

 against all legislative and government interference with any form of engi- 

 neering enterprise. If this be a prejudice, we are quite willing to own it, 

 and stand by it, and we have held most unflinchingly to it. It happens, 

 however, that if we have stuck to a prejudice, our opponents have not 

 fared in the least well with their several legislative and inspectional mea- 

 sures; and we are at this late hour strengthened in our views by their 



