1843.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



277 



ensured the victory of Waterloo, the successful termination of St. Paul's, 

 and will ensure the successful completion of the Houses, viz. a general and 

 (.'liters, an architect and pupils, must he adopted if fresco be chosen: the 

 absurdity of gratifying the democratic independence of British artists, where 

 every one thinks himself able to guide, is ridiculous ; all will be confusion- 

 lime, mortar, splash, cut, scramble and failure. I will venture to say the 

 young mea do not desire it, and no young men can be more easily led, if their 

 affections are touched, than the British. They have now been fairly brought 

 out. and I hope they will not be deserted ; but I advise them, if they have 

 any sub-employment which gives them bread, not to neglect it if they have 

 mothers to maintain, sisters to protect, or relations to help ; let them paint 

 quietly what they are wanted to do. so as not to depend on the caprices of 

 governments, keep their independence by honest means, and to remember 

 they have shown more talent than was expected, though not by me, and more 

 than was desired by many who longed for their failure. 



Now as to the style of design for the walls; must it be in the perfection of 

 art and reality, or must it be the art which was extant when Gothic archi- 

 tecture began ? After the Fall, shelter was early as much a necessity as food, 

 hence arose huts and columns, roofs and houses; then leisure and peace 

 generat?d ornament, and 'hence arose perfect architecture and its orders. 

 Architecture therefore preceded art, and must have been in a high state, 

 when art was in infancy ; but it does not follow that art in infancy is more 

 in character with architecture in perfection, because from causes over which 

 it had no controul. it was in infancy when architecture was perfect! The 

 association may be powerful, but at this time of day, when art in perfect 

 state has been discovered, the association may be rendered as infallible, 

 by uniting perfect art and perfect architecture, as it is now strong in its im- 

 perfection. No man will assert the British people were not as handsome 

 when Westminster Hall was built as now ; — no one will assert they walked 

 on tip toes, as they were painted, or stared as they were painted, or looked 

 as flat as they were painted at the time ; — no man will assert that light and 

 shadow were not as powerful thenasnow — that colour was not as brilliant, 

 and forms not as well knit, and if these things are represented on Gothic 

 buildings the reverse, it was not on principle, but ignorance ; what absurdity 

 then to go back to the ignorance as if it were principle, instead of boldly 

 breaking the association by making common sense the guide, and giving us 

 Britons as we know Britons were, because if Britons were such poor crea- 

 tures as they were painted, neither Westminster Hall or Westminster Abbey 

 would ever have been built, conceived or finished. 



It may be said there is a limit — there is ; the florid vulgarity of Rubens 

 would be as unfit as the starved impotence of Cimabue. The cartoons of 

 Raphael appear to me to he the medium, not inconsistent with colour, 

 or light and shadow, form or expression, nature or idea ; and to this style I 

 earnestly hope the artist will look, independent as it is of the whiskered fe- 

 rocity of the German, the theatrical pedantry of the French, or the careless 

 neglects of the portrait English. 



With the power of drawing, visible in this exhibition of cartoons, nothing 

 need be feared ; and the great superiority of the British school in construc- 

 tion and form, to the French school, as exhibited in the pupil of La Roche, 

 is a singular feature. La Roche's pupil was brought over by a noble lord to 

 floor the school, and the school has floored him ; the reason is. the British 

 begin by the skeleton and construction, all over the country, and if 'hey con- 

 t'nue, no school on earth will surpass them ; and there is no knowing to what 

 extent they will go, whdst the French, (Ingres and La Roche.) do not investi- 

 gate construction till boyshave got a relish for the brush, and then, anatomy 

 and construction are tedious things! Great honour is due to the academy 

 school, for all I praise are students, and if the present keeper docs not permit 

 himself to be Germanized, every excellence may be expected still. There is 

 one affectation, which must not be mistaken for a beauty— the competitors, 

 who have been abroad, make a black line round their figures ; before tracing 

 for the wall this may be well, but the absurdity of doing such a horror, to 

 show you know it is to be done, is contemplibl and pedantic. God keep the 

 British students till the eleventh hour from such a detestable obstruction to 

 rotundity. The desire people of fashion hive for what is new, is a danger to 

 be guarded against by the Commission ; the chances are, if the plan of de- 

 sign be not soon settled, and the artists set properly to work, when the walls 

 are ready, the whole may fall into the hands of young men, for the sake of 



giving them a chance, as it is said, and the whole thing become a ridicule 

 from the most generous feelings. It cannot be too often repeated, that the ca- 

 prices ot the cliques of fashion, who have regularly, with the kindest inten- 

 tions, flattered and entrapped, deserted and ruined, a succession of generous 

 youths, who believed all they were told, till poverty undeceived them, should 

 not be permitted to gain ground, in the dignity of public patronage, 

 for nothing will be the result, but crude experiments without hope, and 

 futile consequences without genius ; the government finding the public money 

 wasted in vain, will become hopeless of raising art, or improving the people, 

 and that honourable memhers may be no longer annoyed, will hurry the 

 affair into the hands of some hasty decorator, who glad of a job will do it 

 cheap, and render Briton again the bye word of some future Winklemau, or 

 some future Do Bus, and ages will agon pass without such another moment. 



Henry Ardor. 



Here my dear friend left off: and I must add, what I am sure every reader 

 will agree to.— God keep us from such a misery. If I find any more papers 

 of my late dear friend, Mr. Editor. 1 will regularly forward them, and beg 

 to say I am. 



Aroor's Execi tor. 



P.S. I am quite sure if anything goes wrong in the commission, I shall 

 be honoured by a visit from Ardor's ghost, from which Heaven defend me. 



FSOCE3DINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. 



March 21. — The President in the Chair. 



" Description of the Blast Furnaces and of the Barrow used for filling 

 the Charges of Mine and Vot:e into them, at the Butterley Iron-Works, Der- 

 byshire." By S. C. Kreeft, Grad. Inst. C. E. 



The three smelting furnaces described in this communication are situated 

 at Butterley, in Derbyshire ; and three others, belonging to the same pro- 

 prietors, exist at Codnor Park Forge, about 2\ miles distant, where then- 

 produce is converted into malleable iron. 



In the internal form or dimensions of these furnaces there is not any pe- 

 culiarity ; the diameter over the hearth is 4 feet, over the boshes 15 feet, 

 and at the charging-plate 8 feet — the total height being 45 feet. 



The stacks, however, differ from the ordinary form in their external con- 

 struction. The base of each is 40 feet square, battering inwards at an angle 

 of 71° (3 inches to 1 foot) ; the quoin-stones and course work being laid at 

 right-angles to the battering line, or at angle of 16° with the horizon. In- 

 stead of the usual semicircular arches over the tuyeres, pointed Egyptian 

 arches are substituted, and an open vertical joint or separation in the ma- 

 sonry is left from the apex of the arch up to the top of the stack on all 

 the four sides. This is done for the purpose of obviating the evils generally 

 arising from the expansion and contraction of the stack in heating and 

 cooling, from which the keystone of the semicircular arch usually falls, and 

 the work cracks all around. With the pointed arch, the vertical joint in 

 the masonry merely opens from the heat, and in contracting resumes its 

 former position, without any injury to the other joints of the masonry or 

 deranging any of the archstones. The stacks are confined in the usual 

 manner by wrought-iron braces, 2 inches diameter, built into the walls, with 

 washer-plates and cotters at the extremities. 



The mode of filling or supplying the materials into the furnace is particu- 

 larly described : it is by means of a circular barrow of wrought iron, running 

 on four wheels, the shafts by which it is guided, being so arranged as to 

 form a steel-yard balance for weighing the contents of the barrow j the 

 bottom is conical, and is capable of being raised or lowered by a rack and 

 pinion, which is worked by a rod placed between the shafts, so that when 

 the workman has pushed the barrow over the furnace-mouth, he can, by 

 turning a handle, lower the conical bottom and distribute the materials 

 equally around the interior periphery of the furnace. This regularity in 

 depositing the materials is of importance to the good working of a furnace, 

 and would alone render the barrow an improvement on the ordinary mode of 

 filling, but it is also found to be more economical in every respect. 

 The charge for good forge pig-iron is — 



Coal 9 cwt. 



Argillaceous iron ore from the coal measures .. KIJ „ 

 Calcareous ore from the Peak of Derbyshire . . 2 „ 



Limestone . . . . . . . . . . 3 ,, 



Four and a quarter charges produce 1 ton of iron, or 38 cwt. of coal to 1 

 ton of iron. 



The average produce of each furnace is from 90 tans to 120 tons per 

 week. 



