3S0 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[Dec. 



larity above alluded to consists in having elliptical columns, instead of 

 circular, where, being attached to the wall in a very narrow street, great 

 projection could not be obtained ; and consequently produce a better effect 

 of liglit and shade, from the depth of the undercutting, than either pilas- 

 ters or semicircular columns. 



Although C'arlton-house, the palace of George IV. when Prince of 

 IValcs, has been removed, and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane which pre- 

 ceded the present one has been burnt down, they both possessed architec- 

 tural qualities too great to suffer the name of their architect, Henry Hol- 

 land, to pass unnoticed. The former consisted of a centre and two pro- 

 jecting wings; the portico was six-columned, of the Coriuthian order, 

 selected from the temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome, the capitals of which 

 are singular for the intertwiuing of the inner volutes. This portico was 

 l>resented by George IV., on the taking down of Carlton-house, to the 

 trustees of the National Gallery, and were adapted by Mr. Wilkins, the 

 architect of that edifice, to the central building. Brury Lane Theatre, that 

 was celebrated for the triuniphs of Mrs. Siddons, the Kembles, and Sheri- 

 dan, its talented proprietor, was, in their opinion, and that of all theatrical 

 critics, the very beau ideal of a dramatic theatre ; nor has its equal been 

 since erected in England. On the summit of this stupendous edifice, the 

 architect had erected a lofty octagon tower, somewhat resembling the 

 Temple of the Winds at Athens, the apex of which he surmounted by a 

 colossal statue of Apollo with his lyre, as the god of music and dramatic 

 poetry. It is singular that, at the awful conflagration which consumed 

 this truly national structure, and caused the House of Commons to adjourn 

 its proceedings in pity to the misfortunes of their brother senator, con- 

 sidering it a general calamity, — the statue of the god, surrounded by 

 flames that reached far above its head, and looking as if in the crater of a 

 volcano, was almost the last object that fell with a death-like crash amidst 

 the fiery mass that was blazing in the pit of this once elegant theatre. 

 This architect also built 'the first Pavilion at Brighton, for the Prince of 

 Wales. It was a neat, unassuming, sea-side villa, decorated with a few 

 Ionic columns, like those of the Ilissus. This building also met the fate 

 of Carlton-house, and was taken down to make way for the present 

 heterogeneous structure. 



One of his buildings, however, did escape destruction — Melbsurne- 

 house, Mhitehall. It occupies a large space of ground between the Horse 

 Guards and the Treasury, with two fronts— one towards the public street, 

 AVhitehall, and the other facing the Wall in St. James's-park. The 

 entrance-front, next Whitehall, is decorated by a four-columned Ionic 

 portico, of the Ilissus order, which, extending to the curb-stone of the 

 footpath, allows carriages to come close to its plinths, and set down 

 visitors under its roof. The footpath is continued under it, which often 

 affords to passengers a friendly shelter from the rain. Right and left of 

 the portico are columns of the same height and proportion, detached from 

 the wall, with projecting entablatures profiled over them, which, with the 

 great projection of the portico, give a play of light and shade too seldom 

 fuund in the street-fronts of our public buildings. This front has no other 

 aperture but the entrance-door, which opens into a spacious hall, covered 

 by a spherical cupola, which leads to the internal apartments of the man- 

 sion. It was built for the late Duke of York, and, from the circumstance 

 of the somewhat overwhelming appearance of its huge cupola, which 

 seems almost to crush the little portico beneath, it gave rise to a ludicrous 

 saying, that I\Ir. Holland had lodged the Duke of York in the roundhouse, 

 and the Prince of Wales iu the pillory. The latter remark alluded to the 

 long Ionic screen that separated the courtyard of Carlton-house from Pali- 

 Mall, through which the portico and the two win^s seemed to peep like 

 the head and two hands of a prisoner in that iustrumeut of punishment. 

 On the nothing-to do appearance of these columns, an Italian architect, 

 the elder Bonomi I believe, inscribed the following epigrammatic question 

 and answer: addressing one of the isolated trunks, he asks — '^ Cara co- 

 lonna chefate qua ?" to which he makes the stone reply—" Nun miiiamo in 

 lerita.'" I quote from memory and hearsay, and know not into what 

 Charivari of the day to refer for a correct version, if in error. Mr. Hol- 

 land's other works were on and about the great building speculation of 

 Sloane-slreet and its neighbourhood, and may be regarded in a similar 

 light, as to architectural character, to those of the Adams in the Adelphi. 



As it has been customary to give ndditions to the names of eminent 

 princes, such as Louis the Gceat, Charles the Bald, Richard the Lion- 

 hearted, so a colemporary biographer of the Brunswick family proposes 



to call the successor of George III. " George the Magnificent." Ai 

 regent and sovereign of these kingdoms, he exhibited a love for arcliitec- 

 tular splendour more capricious than tasteful. Gaudiness was more es- 

 teemed than elegance, and George the Magnificent delighted more in the 

 costly extravagance of the Bioclesian school, than in the tasteful grandeur 

 of Pericles and Phidias. John Nash was exactly the architect to the 

 regent's mind ; and gilded profusion usurped the place and overlaid the 

 purer taste that had been introduced by Chambers, Wyatt, Stuart, Uanoe, 

 and Holland. Hence, George IV. preferred the gorgeous profusion of the 

 Roman Bchool in its decline, to the sublimer truths of the Athenian in its 

 greatest purity ; hence, he preferred the pretty beauties of the Dutch and 

 Flemish masters, to the sober and less apparent magnificence of the Roman 

 school ; hence, he preferred cabinets and bijouterie to works of sterling 

 merit; hence, he preferred Canova to Phidias; and hence, all the bad 

 taste that emanated from the patronage of George the Fourth, He deco- 

 rated all the lower apartments of Carlton-house, low in height as well as 

 in situation, with Corinthian columns, redolent with burnished gold from 

 abacus to plinth ; so bright, indeed, that their proportions could not be 

 scanned, and their only excellence were their extreme cost. This suite of 

 apartments, which were level with the gardens next St. James's park, and 

 beneath the splendid suite of state apartments designed by Holland for 

 levees and other regal purposes, were furnished, by the architect, the 

 cabinet maker, the carver and gilder, the upholsterer and carpet maker, 

 with almost Tiberian luxury, for the personal use and comfort of the regent 

 and his favourites, who could make their exits and entrances by the back 

 way in the park, without ever going up to the public and royal part of the 

 regent's palace. This costly and, as Holland left it, tasteful edifice, he 

 swept away, and pulled down Buckingham house, the favourite residence 

 of his father, to make way for the present Buckingham-palace, which all 

 the patchings of Blore have not been able to lick into decent shape : 

 neither has it a tasteful exterior nor a comfortable interior, as the com- 

 plaints made to Parliament, of the want of domestic accommodation, 

 fully prove. He removed the pretty Pavilion at Brighton for the capri- 

 cious nondescript which now so expensively occupies its place. Before 

 the removal of Carlton-house, when George IV. entertained the greatest 

 assemblage of princes and warriors that, perhaps, ever met together at the 

 English court, after the great and terrible triumph of Waterloo, the enter- 

 tainments were both extravagant and childish. A canal, filled with real 

 water and living fish, meandered among the tureens and plateaux of the 

 dinner table, till the unfortunate sufferers were killed and nearly cooked 

 by the heat of the soups, the viands, and the entn'es. There was also 

 erected in the gardens a circular revolving temple or tent, moved by in- 

 visible machinery, designed by the chief architect whom the prince 

 deigned to honour, for the admiration of the imperial, royal, and gallant 

 visitors to the regent of England. This building is now applied to a very 

 useful purpose, being the model-room at Woolwich-arsenal. There was 

 also a fragile Chinese bridge thrown over the canal in St. James's-park, 

 which, had it been consumed by the illuminating lamps that showed its 

 barbaric proportions to the gazing multitude, as it was threatened, it 

 would have been spared the disgrace of a sarcasm and an early destruc- 

 tion from premature decay. When Canova, shortly afterwards, visited 

 this country, partly to view our metropolis, and principally to feast his 

 eyes upon the unequalled beauties of the Elgin marbles, he was accom- 

 panied in most of his perambulations by an amiable and eminent living 

 architect, whose name I may not mention without permission. He was »o 

 delighted with the simplicity and durable construction of Walerloo-hridge, 

 that he demanded of his guide if it were not built at the public expense ? 

 He was informed that it was erected by private, untitled individuals ; but, 

 if he would accompany him a short distance, he would show him one built 

 by royal command at the public expense, " from the designs and under the 

 superintendence" — to borrow a favourite expression of our craft— of the 

 chief architect to the crown. He took his friend Canova to St. James's- 

 park, he pointed with supreme derision to the pagoda bridge, and ex- 

 claimed — " Behold the work 1" 



Nash must not, however, be judged by these royal puerilities ; for do 

 man should be estimated by the worst, but by the best of his works, unless 

 the former so far preponderate as to overwhelm the latter. Regent street 

 and the Kegent's-park will cany the names of George IV. and John Nash, 

 as patron and architect, with considerable applause to a late posterity. 

 The clearing away of the narrow streets, dirty alleys, and filthy courts, 

 without sewers or underground water-courses — a very honeycomb of fees- 

 pools, and hive of sordid abominations — that existed between Oxford- 

 street and l^all-Mall, to make way for a broad, haudsome, and varied 



