1S47.J 



THE CIVIL ENGINEEll AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



339 



man, whos« powers as an historical painter were soon perceived by the king, 

 painted a large picture for its altar-piece ; the subject selected by his ma- 

 jesty was St. Paul's escape after his sliipwreck on the island of Malta, 

 and his miraculous shaking olfthe viper thnt h:id fastened upon his hand, 

 without injury. This picture is generally esteemed to be one of West's 

 master-pieces; another being the stoning of St. Stephen in Wren's neglected 

 gem of art, the church of St. Stephen, Walbrook. The chapel of Green- 

 wich-hospital also shows West to advantage as a sculptor, in some low 

 reliefs of the history of St. Paul in the panels of the pulpit. 



No event that ever occurred in the history of architecture in England, 

 and thence tliroughout all Europe, produced so sudden, decided, and benefi- 

 cial anelTect as did the works of James Siuart. It surprised and delighted 

 the learned and admirers of art ; the majestic grandeur and simplicity of 

 form exhibited in the general outline of its beautiful temples, and the ex- 

 quisite purity and elegance of detail shown in all the probles of his mould- 

 ings, fascinated the eye of taste. The natural form, in which everything 

 was subservient to utility, proved how pure was the taste of the elegant 

 Athenians. Nor did the contrast between the works of these ancient 

 architects and their successors and self-called followers strike the mind 

 with less force. Unlike the Romans, there were no pediments under pedi- 

 ments, or under porticoes, or in the interior of buildings, — to which absurdi- 

 ties the Romans were so partial, as to draw down the rebuke of Cicero, that 

 his countrymen were so fond of pediments, that if they had to erect a tem- 

 ple in Olympus to the " Jupiter Impluvius," they would cover it with a 

 roof and decorate it with pediments. 



Nor was the contrast greater in the details of their mouldings ; those of 

 the Romans being all subservient to the circle and its parts, whilst those 

 of the Greeks defied the mechanical slavery of the carpenter's compasses. 

 Ellipses, parabolas, and other elegant sections of the cone, are the elements 

 of all their curves, and their Ionic volutes bid proud defiance to the com- 

 passes of Katty Langley and the ingenious mode of striking the Ionic 

 volute invented by those eminent Italian architects, Scamozzi, Vignola, 

 and Andrea Palladio. Let the eye of taste decide between the echinus of 

 Athenian architecture and the ovolo of the Roman ; the cymatium of the 

 Greek and the ogee (what a name !) of the Roman ; the hold, manly, 

 aud elegant curvature, amenable to no compasses but those which the artist 

 carries in his eye, of that type of the Ionic order in the temple on the 

 Ilissus.orthe more beautiful complicated sweeps that form the elegant cur- 

 vatures of those of iMinerva Polias, one of which is in the British IMuseum, 

 with any Roman or Italian example that ever existed in type or in book, 

 from Vitruvius to Borromini. 



It has been the fashion of late with certain sciolists to decry Greek 

 architecture as a heresy, a mere ephemeral fashion, a style of bygone times 

 not worth reviving ; and among others, calling themselves architects, that it 

 is good for its remote antiquity, but has been greatly improved by the Ro- 

 mans and Italians. Have we not, say they, added two orders, the Tuscan 

 and the Composite, to the original three? Fluted and cabled and pearled 

 and olived and bedizened the Corinthian, making it as fine as a May-day 

 queen? Angularized or Scamozzied the volutes, lengthened the shafts, 

 bolstered the frieze like the side of a Dutch cheese, and modillionized its 

 cornice, that Ictinus would not know his own invention ; added ogees and 

 annulets and nolarinos to the unfinished capital of Minerva Parthenon; and 

 a handsome base to its shaft, like a buckled shoe to a naked foot, — and call 

 you not these improvements and additions to the bald Greek style .' — Bald 

 it is, indeed, as used by some of modern times ; making a miniature model 

 of the majestic temple of Minerva an entrance stuck upon the flank of a 

 huge dead wall, or, 



"To what vile uses may we come, Horatio," 

 to serve as the passage to a stinking stable-yard. To transform the beau- 

 tiful style of the temple of Bacchus at Teos — the god who rivalled Apollo 

 in youth and beauty, and shared with him the attentions of the muses and 

 the graces — to the embellishments of gourmandisiug eating-houses, or to the 

 still more debased temples of intemperance, the Bacchus of the gin-shop ; 

 the god to whom Gay in his fable of the " Court of Death," gave the wand 

 of pre-eminence before all his other faithful subjects, saying emphatically, 

 *' He shares their mirth, their social joys. 

 And as a courted guest, destroys ; 

 The charge on him must justjy fall. 

 Who finds employment for you all.** 



Fuseli, on being asked whether there was not much breadth of style in 

 one of these Anglo-Greco plagiaries, replied, " that if baldness was breadth, 

 it was broad enough in all conscience." 



See, say the Romanists to the Grecians, how gaily we have dressed your 

 naked Venus — Uow nobly we have attired your slim Apollo — how we have 



fed and fructified your barren Teian god ? — You have, indeed, sighs a 

 venerable Greek, clothed the Venus of Praxiteles with a head dress of wool 

 and powder, like Ramsay's portrait of good Queen Charlotte ; given her a 

 boddice, hoop, and farthingale, with high-heeled pointed-toed shoes, like 

 Bird's statue of Queen Anne in St. Paul s churchyard ; transformed the 

 Hyperean curls of the Delphic god into a periwig of George the Second ; 

 cut and concealed the rest of the manly beauties of the son of Lalona in 

 attire, like one of Hogarth's coxcombs ; and fructified the Grecian Bacchus 

 into a genuine city Silenus, bursting with dropsy, goui, and apoplexy. 



Greek art may be reviled, but let its revilera equal it if they can, — to 

 surpass it is beyond their powers : hence the cause why they traduce what 

 they cannot understand. Samuel Johnson, on finding a Greek quotation 

 amidst some modern trash, like " a green Oasis in a desert world," exclaimed, 

 " So much Greek, so much gold." So does the man of true taste on viewing 

 the architecture and sculpture of the godlike Greeks. 



About the same period with Chambers, Wyatt, and the Adams, flourished 

 other architectural stars of lesser brilliancy. Ware, who assisted Kent and 

 Ripley in the delineations of Walpole's mansion at Houghton, and known by 

 his ponderous folio, "A Complete Body of Architecture," published in 1768, 

 — as bulky and as little read as the statutes at large in an alderman's library. 

 Brettingham, the architect of Holkham, in Norfolk, the plans, elevations, 

 and sections of which, together with a description of the statues, pictures, 

 and drawings, he published in a folio volume in 1773. He also designed and 

 executed the handsome mansion near the south-west angle of St. Jaraes's- 

 square, London, now the town residence of the Bishops of Winchester ; and 

 a few other works of less importance, but none marked by any distinctive 

 character. 



Among the architectural publications of this period, useful alike to the 

 student and amateur, may be enumerated the works of the collected designs 

 of Inigo Jones, Palladio, Scamozzi, Perrault, &c., by Kent, Lord Burlington, 

 Leoni, James, and Ware, which were, however, for a time swallowed up by 

 the magic wand of Stuart, as that of Moses did those of the Egyptians be- 

 fore Pharoah. 



James also flourished about this period, and is best known to architectural 

 critics by his Hawksmoorian churches of Greenwich and Deptford ; the 

 former of which was judiciously selected, a few years since, by the Royal 

 Academy, as an architectural competition for its silver medal students. 



Paine also enjoyed a portion of the royal and noble patronage of the 

 country in the same era ; he built the pretty bridge over the Thames at 

 Richmond, and made some pleasing additions, in the Elizabethan style, to 

 his own residence at Addlestone, near Chertsey, Surrey, which was for many 

 years the hospitable residence of the late Sir Charles Wetherell, of legal and 

 facetious memory. Paine was one of the attached surveyors of the crowu 

 in the Land-revenue department, and had considerable practice as an archi- 

 tect among the nobility. None of bis works, however, entitle him to the 

 name of a master in his art, nor have distinguished him from the herd of 

 servile imitators of the Italian school. The plans are all well arranged and 

 commodious, sound in construction, and well built ; but as meagre in 

 originality of style as the most servile copyist of the common-place school 

 to which he belonged. He did that which it would he well if better archi- 

 tects would imitate — namely, pul)lished his works ; one entitled " Plans, 

 Elevations, and Sections of Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Houses, &c. &c, 

 executed in various parts of England," 2 vols, folio, 1767, 1783; and the 

 other, " Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Ornaments of the Mansion-House 

 of Doncaster," folio, 17S1. 



The early part of the reign of George 111., so proUfic in works on art, 

 produced Cameron's elaborate treatise, " On the Baths of the Romans," in 

 which he successfully explained and improved the " Restorations" of PalK 

 dio. It was published in 1772. Colin Campbell also published his very 

 useful work, the " Vitruvius Britannicus," in four consecutive volumes, 

 between the years 1715 and 1771 ; to which Woolf and Gandon respectively 

 added supplementary volumes, of equal skill and correctness. More recently. 

 Richardson added another volume, so much inferior to its predecessors, thf 

 the work was discontinued. 



The latter part of this fertile period produced Robert Milne, a pupil, I 

 believe, of Robert Adam ; at all events, he was of the same country and 

 school. Like Wren, he exhibited precocious talents ; for scarcely at the age 

 of manhood, he triumphantly bore away the first prize in the first class 

 of architecture at Rome, and had the honour of being the first Briton who 

 obtained a premium for art in that city. He was not only a Protestant— 

 and consequently a heretic, in the estimation of the professors of the primi- 

 tive faith — but was also of that anti- Papistical sect, a Scotch Calvinist. Th? 



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