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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[Dec. 



noble quadrangle, and perfected the entrance began by bis uncle, James 

 Wyatt, and known as George the Third's staircase ; finished some and 

 added others to the noble suite of domestic and state apartments, which 

 are now so generally admired. He rebuilt and added lo many of the ex- 

 ternal towers and other buildings on tlie principal terrace ; and brought 

 the whole exterior into a unity of design, that it never possessed since the 

 (lays of William of W'ykehain, its original architect. He also raised the 

 Keep, or Round-tower, nearly 100 feet above its former altitude; and 

 rendered the whole mass of buildings of which this magnilicent royal 

 palace is composed, to a unity of design that its former heterogeneous 

 mixture of styles apparently bade defiance to. 



Sir Jeffrey W'yattville began his career as an architect rather late in life, 

 having practised the more profitable business of a builder at the western 

 end of the metropolis. He, however, showed a great love for art from the 

 earliest period of his life, and often exhibited designs, of great taste, in 

 the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy : — one, a picture in oil of 

 i'riara*s palace, as described by Homer, showed inventive talent of the 

 Highest order. Sir Jeffrey published a beautiful series of his works at 

 Windsor-castle, which ought to be in the hands of every lover of this 

 noble art. 



Downing-college, Cambridge, Haileybury-college, Hertford, University- 

 college, London, and the buildings containing the National Gallery and 

 the Royal Academy, on the northern-side of Trafalgar-square, are fro m 

 the designs of AVilliam Wilkins, R.A., formerly Regius Professor of 

 Architecture in the Royal Academy, and author of several works and 

 delineations. These buildings are all of one family, one school, one style — 

 pedantry. Grecian art, instead of giving freedom and beauty of style to 

 the designs of this artist, Minerva seems to have frozen up all his faculties 

 by the terrors of her ajgis. So much Greek, so much gold, was a saying 

 of .Samuel Johnson ; and so much Greek, so much cold, was the practise 

 of William Wilkins, — for no liberty would he give or take, no line or 

 member would he use but for which he could not find a precedent in some 

 ancient Greek building — and the older and more formal it was the better. 

 He was a Greek puritan and an archaic methodist. The Corinthian por- 

 tico of the National Gallery is Holland's, or it would not have been so 

 luxuriant in its foliage. But he has frozen the entablature by his Hellenic 

 coldness. Had he been a sculptor, he would have cut off the Hyacinthian 

 locks of the god of Day ; he would have deprived Jupiter of his ambro- 

 sial curls, as Delilah did Sampson, ^and .sent them both into Olympus 

 like a couple of Roundheads. As to the interior of the building, the 

 Eoyal Academy may well regret the greater dimensions and finer propor- 

 tions of the large exhibition-room and well-proportioned council-chamber, 

 designed for them by Chambers, and decorated by the pencil of Reynolds. 

 The exhibition-rooms of the National Gallery are unworthy of the name, 

 and some of our auctioneers and picture-dealers have better. As to the 

 portico, it is, from its situation, but of little use ; and the Royal Academy 

 are obliged, during their exhibitions, to erect a temporary wooden one 

 beneath and without it, for shelter and shade. At Carltoa-house, it was a 

 useful addition to the building : in this place, it is a useless application, 

 stuck up for the admiration of gazing cabmen and hackney-coachmen, 

 whilst loitering upon their stand. 



The portico at University-college stands in the same category — useless, 

 and, therefore, an unnecessary appendage to the building. The architect 

 has also mistakenly placed the staircases to the principal story outside of 

 the structure, instead of within its walls, like a Swiss chalet. Should the 

 Euiperorof Russia, in imitation of the Empress Catherine, erect another 

 ice palace at Petersburgh, no man could have executed the freezing task 

 80 well as the cold and chaste architect of Downing-college. 



Yet Mr. Wilkins was a learned man, was a graduate of the University 

 of Cambridge, an accomplished Greek scholar, and, perhaps, the best 

 educated classic that has honoured the profession of architecture since Sir 

 Christopher Wren, Had the talents of Mr. Wilkins been directed solely 

 to literature, Grecian archaiology, the higher branches of mathematics, or 

 lo an accurate delineation of those antiquities which he so profoundly 

 admired, he would have obtained a higlier standing among the great men 

 of his country, than he does among its architects ; lacking, as he does, the 

 architect's greatest qualities — inventiou, and freedom from pedmtry. Had 

 he been sole dictator of art, no style would have passed current in his 

 realm, but the hard, dry, cold Greek of the oldest times, without a shadow 

 of invention to give it vitality. His was the very mummy of the art, — as 

 cold, as lifeless, and as much bound up by the bauds of precedent. It is 

 the Greek style of Mr. Wilkins that has wearied so many of its warmest 

 admirers. 



The Bank of Eugland, the new Treasury-chambers, before their recent 

 alteration by Mr. Barry, the royal entrance to the old House of Lords, affect- 

 edly culled by its architect " La scata nggin," and some others of his 

 earlier works, show the exuberance of the fancy, while the sound judg- 

 ment and good taste that acknowledge thu rules and precepts of the great- 

 est masters of the art, place Sir John Soane on a level with any English 

 architect since the days of Jones and Wren. Whilst the puerilities and 

 freaks of fancy indulged in in liis own house and museum, Liucoln's-inn- 

 fields, the Dulwichgallery, the new buildings at Chelsea-hospital, and the 

 National-debl-oflice, in the Old-Jewry, exhibit a wild exuberance of 

 novelty, unchastened by the sober rules of art, it has stamped them with 

 the character of what the Italians would call Cnpriceioi, rather than severe 

 compositions. His greatest work, the Bank of England, whether taken 

 as a whole, or considered as a series of detached buildings, erected at 

 several periods, and subsequently brought into a whole by the hand of 

 taste, is a work of singular and sterling merit. The long north front next 

 Lothbury, is simple, grand, and imposing, and is among his earliest and 

 best productions. The west front, next Princes-street, whilst the ugliest 

 of all forms in architecture, an acute augle, which the junction of the two 

 fronts form, is overcome in an original and masterly manner. This is ma- 

 naged by cutting off a considerable portion of the uniightly angle, and 

 converting it into a slight recess ; and the two fronts are gracefully con- 

 nected by a circular portico of columns and pilasters, the entablature of 

 which is surmounted by a beautiful acroterium, over the obtuse angle at 

 the back of the portico, under which is an unoccuped niche, corresponding 

 with those in the Lothbury front. Soane, undoubtedly, had in his mind 

 the semicircular porticoes of Ihe north and south transepts of St. Paul's 

 (of which he has often expressed to me bis most ardent admiration), when 

 he placed this segment of the circular temple at Tivoli to conceal this ugly 

 corner. He has, by this means, not only overcome an unforeseen difficulty, 

 but converted what would have ben a blemish in common bands into a 

 positive beauty. So original, so happy, and so beautiful, is this gem of 

 our art, that the committee of architectnral students of the Royal Aca- 

 demy made it the reverse of their medal, which they struck in honour of 

 their eminent professor, and presented to him before his retirement from 

 public life. It has been proposed, and the thought is a happy one, that a 

 statue of its architect should be placed in this vacant niche, and thus 

 supply all that is wanted — a figure to this unique design. The small 

 quadrangle called the Lothbury-court, is a design of surp-assing beauty 

 and elegance. A recessed portico on the right hand, and on the left lead 

 to the buUion-ollice and other important offices of the Bank; whilst four 

 detached columns of the same order, supporting statues of the four quar- 

 ters of the globe, conduct, through a semicircular-headed gateway, to the 

 interior apartments of the edifice. Th-at portion of the quadrangle which 

 immediately faces the great entrance gates, possesses a magnitude and 

 beauty sutlicient for a triumphal arch. The architect was so justly proud 

 of this design, that he erected a copy of the columnar portion of it, upon a 

 smaller scale, as a decoration to the front of his own villa at Ealing. The 

 ample rotunda, formerly used as a stock-exchange, but now as one of the 

 dividend-paying-offices, is a grand, simple masterpiece of art; as is the 

 large office at the north-west corner of the building, decorated with lofty 

 Ionic columns of beautiful Greek proportions, with a vaulted ceiling. 

 These beautiful and correct works are among Soane's first and best pro- 

 ductions. The front next Bartholomew-lane was next in point of time, 

 and shows a greater tendency towards an excess of ornament than Ihe 

 preceding ones. This elevation abutted for some time upon Sir Robert 

 Taylor's Coriuthian pavilions, which were afterwards taken down, and 

 the Soaneian style carried on in Threadneedle-street, from boih ends, till 

 they joined the centre of the original building, erected by George Samp- 

 son, in the reigu of William III. This, finally, gave way to the present 

 new centre, which is by no means the happiest of Soane's designs. Thus 

 the Bank became completely isolated, and has but one entrance in each 

 street: — that in Lothbury has been before described ; the one in Bartholo- 

 mew-lane leads to the rotunda and other public offices for the payment of 

 dividends and transfer of stock ; the three next Threadneedle-street, which 

 may be considered but as one, lead through a spacious court to the ball, 

 the front and interior of which exhibit a fair specimen of Sampson's style 

 as an architect. The entrance next Princes-street is, I believe, never 

 opened. Thus there are but three entrances to this immense treasure of 

 enormous wealth ; uor can a more appropriate building for such a purpose 

 be imagined. The order used is that of the circular temple at Tivoli, 

 known to every connoisseur of picturesque beauty ; but which is of such 

 obscure origin, as to be unknown whether it was dedicated to the goddess 



