1847.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



301 



Wyatt determine to increase his store by visiting the academies, schools, and 

 buildings of France and Italy ; and the result was, that on his return to his 

 native country he gave proofs of a taste that wanted nothing but a visit to 

 the still more refioed climes of Greece to have completed. But alas, a 

 residence in that country, owing to the wars between the Turks and Vene- 

 tians, and other turbulences, rendered it even more unsafe than it was in the 

 time when Stuart and his fellow travellers visited that afflicted and long- 

 suffering country. On his return to his native land, he astonished the 

 connoisseurs and travelled patricians of England, by his first work, the 

 Pantheon in Oxford-street, a work which more deserved the name of the 

 building it professed to imitate than any other in Europe, as pictures and 

 engravings still extant sufficiently prove. It required but to have been built 

 of more substantial materials than was the timber cupola, niggardly allowed 

 him by the proprietors, to have rendered the Pantheon of London incom- 

 parably the best imitation of that of Rome. The best part of this fine 

 work, the cupola and all its decorations, was unfortunately destroyed by fire, 

 and was never afterwards adequately restored. After its re-instatement, it 

 was used as a saloon for masquerades, ridottos, and exhibitions of pictures, 

 and once of Lunardi's monster balloon, which was constructed to ascend 

 with fifty people. The upper half alone of this stupendous machine reached 

 from the eye of the cupola, from which it was suspended, nearly to the 

 pavement, as was witnessed by the writer of this article. The superior part 

 of the balloon was to have represented the cupola of a temple, from which 

 was suspended a circular tambour of cloth, painted in imitation of columns 

 and entablature of the Corinthian order, to complete the peristyle. At the 

 base of this was to have been attached a gallery with pedestals and balusters 

 for the scronauts, with doors to the interior of the peristyle, leading to the 

 car which carried the furnace and fuel, — it being on Montgolfier's principle, 

 of rarified air produced and supported by fire. The Pantheon was after- 

 wards converted into a dramatic theatre, for the exclusive performance of 

 English opera, but it was put down by the managers of the patent theatres, 

 by arresting some of the leading performers, of whom one or two had been 

 members of the Covent-garden company. After many vicissitudes, it has 

 been nearly rebudt as to its interior construction, and used as a bazaar for 

 tbe sale of works of art and fancy articles. 



The front of the Pantheon next Oxford-street consisted of two slightly- 

 projecting wings, and an Ionic portico projecting from the receding centre, 

 the upper part of which was finished by a balustrade, and was covered by a 

 terrace which was entered by a large central Venetian window. The whole 

 facade was marked by a timidity of design more befitting a student than a 

 master of his art; wanting boldness and a greater diversity of light and 

 shade. The Ionic order of the portico bore marks, however, of an attempt 

 at invention, being copied from no known example. It singularly enough 

 fell into the flat volutes of the Greeks, instead of the angular volutes of the 

 RomauH, proving that if Wyatt had not seen the temple of the Apollo Dedy- 

 niasus, he could at least compose a more tasteful capital than he had seen in 

 Rome ; which he certainly did far above any Roman example, but far indeed 

 below the purity of the worst of the Greek specimens. 



Wyatt not only surprised the admirers of architecture by this work, but 

 also by his designs and drawings that he brought from Italy, and the exten- 

 sive knowledge he possessed of the arts in general. His polished manners 

 and numerous polite accomplishments gave facility to the development of 

 his ideas, and secured him a host of patrons and friends among the great. 

 He became the principal architect of the day ; was consulted by all the 

 leading peers and commoners of the two kingdoms who were about to build, 

 enlarge, or improve their mansions ; corporations sent to him for designs for 

 town-halls and assembly-rooms ; bishops for new palaces ; deans and chap- 

 ters for repairs of their cathedrals ; and players for designs for theatres. In 

 fact. Sir Christopher Wren had scarcely more employers or more buildings 

 in hand at one time, than had James Wyatt in the zenith of his employ- 

 ment. 



At the death of Sir William Chambers, Wyatt succeeded to bis chair in 

 the office of surveyor-general of the Board of Works, and was admitted to 

 that easy familiarity and confidential intercourse with his royal master, 

 George III., surpassing even that of his predecessor, whom the king always 

 regarded with somewhat of the respect due to a tutor. Indeed, the inter- 

 course which is necessary between a sovereign and his chief architect was as 

 complete between George the Third and James Wyatt as was possible 

 between two such persons ; the king never desiring to be treated by any one 

 whom he condescended to consult otherwise than as an English gentleman, 

 and Wyatt was too well bred to be either servile or pert : indeed, the fami- 

 liarity that existed between Charles the Second and Sir Christopher Wren 



much resembled it, except that in this case the king was occasionally too 

 much of a roisterer, and loved to indulge in a few jokes upon his little 

 architect's want of sesquipedalian stature ; — that between George the 

 Fourth and John Nash was as professionally perfect, except that here the 

 king was too well bred to notice, in his walks with his little architect in the 

 crowded saloons of Carlton-house, the difference of their stature, any more 

 than he did when he was walking with his little friend. Count Boruwlaski. 

 For these, if an apology be necessary, we must have recourse to Churchill, 

 who says — 



"Before such merits all defects mMst fly, 



Pritchard's genteel and Garrick six feet high." 



The before-mentioned qualifications possessed by James Wyatt, till then 

 unknown in one man since the days of Jones and Wren, had previously to 

 the accession of George III. led to the employment of Italian architects, 

 now reverted through the influence of that sovereign into English channels. 

 Possessed of genius, taste, and feeling, Wyatt revived a correct style, and 

 introduced one still purer than any of his predecessors, — remote, it is true, 

 from all the transcendent purity of the genuine Greek school, but nearer 

 approaching to it than the best Italian known. The ancient architecture of 

 England, the neglected and almost forgotten Gothic, came, by desire of his 

 sovereign, under Wyatt's investigation. Here was a new field opened to 

 him ; but he had seen many of the finest Gothic cathedrals of France and 

 Northern Italy in his travels, and the style was therefore not so new to him 

 as to Wren. Nor did he so thoroughly despise it as Wren : yet he never 

 comprehended it in all its exquisite niceties. The restoration of Windsor- 

 castle and the repairs necessary to be done to the venerable cathedral of its 

 diocess, Salisbury, led both the monarch and his architect to close Vitruvius, 

 Palladio, Serlio, and all books treating on the "five orders of architecture," 

 for a time, and to open Dugdale and other musty writers on the cathedrals 

 and castellated buildings of England. The additions to Windsor-castle show 

 that Wyatt thought that if he could not amend he would not alter the 

 original styles of the buildings, and he completed these labours with great 

 credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of his royal and munificent 

 patron. The celebrated abbey at Fonthill, which was erected entirely froni 

 his designs, for the rich and tasteful Beckford, the celebrated author of 

 " Vathek," was a brilliant instance of Wyatt's genius, but was not so 

 pedantically correct in its details as to please the hypercritics of the Camdea 

 school. The tower was lofty and imposing in eflTect, visible at a great dis- 

 tance, as was the intention of its proprietor; its apartments were numerous, 

 gorgeous, and elegant, replete with all those exquisite niceties that so marked 

 the fancies of Beckford, and was a vast shrine, cabinet, or jewel-case, filled 

 to every corner with gems of art and literature of the most precious de- 

 scription that the lordly wealth of its splendid owner could cram into it. 

 The design and execution of this unique building reflect the greatest credit 

 both upon the talents and taste of its architect. Its unfortunate fate is too 

 well known to be described here, but the enquiring reader may be fully 

 gratified as to its plan, general effect, and details, in Mr. Britton's elaborate 

 and careful work on Fonthill-abbey. 



Wyatt's greatest offences against the rigid laws of Gothic architecture are 

 the exterior of the palace at Kew, and the west front of the Parliament- 

 houses that were burned down some few years since. Both consisted of a 

 series of sash windows and piers, in the manner of any common dwelling- 

 house, Gothicised as plasterers call it by Roman cement, splayed reveals, 

 Gothic water tables over the apertures, a splayed coved moulding over tbe 

 upper tier, and a series of little port-holes by way of a parapet. The arcade 

 or cloister to the House of Commons was below criticism. Although the 

 style of these two buildings receive the sohriquet of the Wyatt-Gothic, it is 

 more than surmised that a higher power had a hand in it and Wyatt bore 

 tbe blame. His houses, villas, and mansions are among the most convenient, 

 splendid, and tasteful in the country, and bear upon their face that their 

 builders were not their own architects. As an instance of his power of 

 combining splendour and elegance with comfort and convenience, uniting 

 the state-rooms of the Italian palace (where one room is but a passage to 

 another) with the comforts of an English mansion, which was often rendered 

 intricate by too many passages for the sake of privacy, Wyatt's own man- 

 sion, at the western end of Foley-place, with its two well projecting wings 

 that gave it the complete appearance of a town house, and its garden-front 

 next Portland-place looking hke a country villa, is a forcible instance. I 

 have often visited it in the architect's life-time, when my late friend and 

 fellow-student, John Westmacott, a younger brother of Sir Richard West- 

 macott, R.A., was his pupil, I have since revisited it about five years ago, 



