J 847.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECI'S JOURNAL. 



371 



In the next montli's Journal, I intend to give a table of the value of P 

 for different angles of the crank, when \V= 1, v = \, r=\, and c = 4, which 

 will be about a medium value of c. This will reduce the above to the fol- 

 lowing form : — 



P = (\y+ s'W' + W") X — , T being the tabular number. 



r 



The practical inferences will also be attempted to be shown. 



Rochdale, Nov. 15, 1817. 



M. N. 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK. 

 FASCICULUS LXXVI. 



*' I must have liberty 

 Withal, as large a charter as the winds. 

 To blow on whom I please." 



I. It is an ill wind indeed that blows nobody good. Penny-a-liners 

 thrive upon accidents, ''awful occurrences," and disasters : a famine helps 

 lo keep Ihem from starvation, and "' a most tragical murder" from cutting 

 their own throats. In like manner, the " Arch aud Statue" was a wind- 

 fall to the critics — especially the smallfry gentry, who having got their 

 cue, roared out as lustily as sucking doves. To that enormity, however, 

 we seem to be now reconciled, — perhaps, by the irresistible argument 

 advanced for suffering the Statue to remain, allliough the reason assigned 

 was such as to cause some people to quote Johnson, and exclaim — 



"From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow," 

 It is now the Palace which is the general butt of criticism, or rather is 

 beginning to become so ; for although it has been censured severely, cen- 

 sure is not as yet so universally expressed, — many preferring, for reasons 

 tolerably obvious, to be silent, and take no notice of it at all. Their very 

 silence, however, is most significantly condemnatory of the Palace, since 

 they would be fulsomely loud with their praise, were it possible in any 

 way to commend it. Their silence, moreover, betrays what sort of solici- 

 tude it is with which they so busily interest themselves, and affect to 

 watch over the interests of Art. Criticism — honest and genuine criticism 

 — is no respecter of persons ; it makes no distinction between Prince or 

 Pecksniff; or if it made distinction at all, it would be to animadvert with 

 most severity on bad taste and paltriness of taste in the former, as being 

 decidedly influential for mischief to Art. 



II. One presumption strongly in favour of those who betake themselves 

 to the practice of any art to which they were not at first educated in their 

 youth, is that they have been impelled to do so by a natural irresistible 

 impulse towards it and a sincere affection for it. Accordingly, when Mr. 

 Blore abandoned his original profession of engraver for that of architect, 

 there was reasonable ground for supposing he was instigated to do so by the 

 consciousness of possessing not only a preference, but superior talent for the 

 art which he thought proper to make his new calling. It was not, indeed, 

 to be supposed that he would distinguish himself by any particular ability 

 ia construction and other mechanical and technical matters, or in what 

 comes under the general term of business, yet it was rather to be expected 

 that he would display some touches at least of geuius and imagination — 

 some of those felicitous unborrowed ideas that not all the professional 

 training in the world will enable any one to produce. Nevertheless, it is 

 precisely in the artistic and imaginative that Blore fails, and fails most 

 egregiously ; VTherefore he may, so far, be said to signalize himself egre- 

 giously also. Reversing what the satirist says of Perrault, he has turned 

 from a good draughtsman and engraver, a wretchedly bad architect. 

 Fondness for architecture he may have ; although even that may be ques- 

 tioned, since con amore feeling never impels him to exhibit at the Royal 

 Academy, — a piece of forbearance in which he emulates another shining 

 glory of the British school of architecture. He will not, it may be pre- 

 sumed, break through his rule of non-exhibiling, even out of compliment 

 to the Palace, and yet he might take the opportunity of showing his '* new 

 building" to very great advantage in a drawing, by representing it just as 

 it shows itself through a very dense fog. 



III. An article in the New Monthhj, purporting to be a " Secret History 

 of the Court and Times of George IV.," contains the following interesting 

 contribution to architectural history. " During the time the unhappy man 



[Cashman, the sailor,] was suffering the sentence of the law, the Prince 

 [Uegent] was occupied in the inspection of a surveyor's [!] estimate and 

 plans for the erection of a house for the Duke of Wellington. ' A palace it 

 shall be,' exclaimed his royal highness. Lord Burghursh detailed to the 

 Prince all i\s proportiuns, it occupying four fronts. The architect of this 

 design is young Cockerell, and his estimate five hundred thousand pounds, 

 every farthing of which, the Prince says, shall be expended upon it. How 

 the money is to be raised is another question." It is still a question per- 

 haps if this same piquant anecdote be little belter than one of those random 

 bits of gossip which the concoctors of " secret histories " so greedily 

 swallow and so complacently divulge. At any rate, "young Cockerell" must 

 know something of the matter, yet he seems disposed to keep the secret, 

 notwithstanding that a design which would have required half-a-million to 

 execute must have been something magnijique, — the mere fame of which 

 ought to have overwhelmed the author of it with commissions. It did not 

 however, help him to the patronage of George himself, for when Bucking- 

 ham House was to be metamorphosed into Buckingham Palace, he gave 

 the job to Nash. M'hile as to the Duke, he, perhaps, finding that the 

 intention of building him ' a palace' had clean evaporated, bethought of 

 building for himself a snug little house, for which he employed Ben 

 Wyatt as his Vitruvius, aud which, if not an architectural "lion," deserves 

 very well to pass for an architectural sheep. 



IV. Another bit is at any rate curious, as showing after what fashion 

 the writer understood what he was speaking of. — ^^ New Jiniirov^mtiits ! 

 Waterloo Place, opposite Carlton House, is beginning to assume something 

 like an uniform feature with (the) facade of Carlton House. The columns 

 are composed of brick supporting a scaffolding pole (!), and the latter 

 supports the entablature (!). Now, when the pole rots, down will come 

 the whole structure. So much for the economy of the architect." Aud so 

 much, also, for the nous of the critic who discerned scaffolding poles sup- 

 ported by the columns, and supporting the entablature. 



V. Without corresponding worthiness of design, value and goodness of 

 material only increases dissatisfaction — that is, of the intelligent; for the 

 uneducated in art — and who are so far the vulgar, the uninitiated pro- 



fanum vulgus, let them belong to what class of society they may — have no 

 other standard of excellence than size and cost. Ask such persons their 

 opinion of a building, and they will perhaps tell you it is a very grand 

 one, because it is very large and all of stone, although it may nevertheless 

 be in itself a complete nullity, if considered as a production of architecture, 

 and hardly worth lath and plaster. So far from affording any satisfaction, 

 it is truly mortifying and vexatious to find, as is frequently the case, 

 superior material employed for what is exceedingly poor, if not positively 

 bad in point of design. More than one structure might be mentioned that, 

 owing to the unfortunate durability of its materials, will last to disgrace its 

 author, unless it should have the good luck to be metamorphosed — of which 

 there have lately been one or two instances — into something ^uite different. 

 JMere market-value is the criterion by which most persons steer their criti- 

 cism. Tell them that a picture cost a thousand guineas, and — O, the hypo- 

 crites ! — they will instantly pretend to admire it— to discern a thousand 

 beauties in it, although, in all probability, they had actually turned up 

 their noses at the very same performance had they heard that it cost only 

 two pounds, or that it was painted by some Mr. Smith, Almost the very 

 first question or remark of all which people ask concerning what ought to be 

 estimated by its artistic value, relates to cost and price, — which is both 

 exceedingly vulgar, and exceedingly English. Itisthe ordinary reverence 

 for mere cost aud suoiptuousness that has obtained so much fame for Ver- 

 sailles, that monument of a taste at once frivolous and prosaic, — poetic 

 only in the wasteful prodigality that stamps it, showing what reckless pro- 

 fusion can do for utter barrenness of imagination, aud how exceedingly 

 little the utmost it can accomplish is. All that the most extravagant ex- 

 penditure of money could effect was there done. Of money-power there 

 was vastly more than enough to have produced ihe most glorious monu- 

 ment of architecture the world ever beheld, or fancy can conceive, if there 

 be any foundation for the almost fabulous statements that have- been put 

 forth relative to its cost, some of which give a total of Five Hundred, 

 others of Ttvelie Hundred, Millions of francs ! Of art-power, however, 

 there was none ; nevertheless great influence for perverting taste through- 

 out all Europe. 



VI. Those who are so excessively rigid in their notions as to tolerate no 

 imitative materials for decoration, but would proscribe them altogether as 

 "sham," and of course very paltry also, no matter how artistically they 

 may be employed, and how excellent the effect produced, — such persons, 

 I say, must feel quite scandalised at Sir Walter Scott's taste in carrying 



4S* 



