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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[May 



already referred to, by which this gorgeous display of transparent colour is 

 harmonized and supported ; every portion of the interior surface of the 

 Chapel is covered with the richest and most positive colours, relieved by 

 gold. The shafts of the columns, hoth principal and subordinate, exhibit the 

 briglitest vermilion and green, the vaulting shafts, which present the largest 

 surfaces, being broken up by gold lines, disposed in various patterns ; the 

 lines themselves being eral)osscd and minutely diapered, and the intervals 

 filled with the embossed arms of France and Castile. The removal of the 

 presses has revealed a magnificent dado, resembling that in Westminster 

 Abbey and other buildings of the period; the back ground elaborately diaper. 

 ed and all the foliage gilt. In the spandrils of the arches are sculptured 

 angels on grounds of blue enamel, diapered with gold. As the dim religious 

 light admitted into the building is too feeble to prevail against the immense 

 mass of colour, au ingenious and successful device is adopted to supply the 

 place of light and shade in the sculptured details, and to give them the sharp- 

 ness in which they would otherwise be deficient, by defining the edges of the 

 foliage with a thin black line. Against the pillars are brackets destined to 

 receive statues, some of which are restored, but not yet placed; they are all 

 of that superior class of sculpture as compared with contemporary works 

 elsewhere, which marks the French school of the Middle Ages, and are ela- 

 borately decorated with enamel and jewels. The only part of this splendid 

 interior not perfectly satisfactory is the vaulting, of which the plain blue 

 ground seme of fleura-de-lis is too simple for the rest, and from this ob- 

 servation must be excepted the apsis, where a border round each compart- 

 ment affords the necessary relief. Under the Chapel is a crypt or sub- 

 Chapel, partaking of the same style of decoration, but not yet restored. 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK. 

 FASCICULUS LXVIII. 



" I must have liberty 

 Withal, as large a charter as the winds. 

 To blow on whom I please." 



I. Of all the ancient orders the Grecian-Doric is by far the most in- 

 tracticable — almost to impracticability, although it has been largely intro- 

 duced into practice in this country. By impracticsbility is to be under- 

 stood not any difficulty as to construction or ei«cution,but the impossibility 

 of applying it consistently or naturally in buildings which are altogether 

 differently constituted from those in which it was originally employed. It 

 is so obstinately stern and iutlexible, and so strongly marked in character, 

 that it will suffer nothing else to come in contact with it. Nevertheless it 

 has been patched up with, and patched upon, everything, Gothic alone ex- 

 cepted. So long as the mere columns and entablatures have been correct, 

 that is, mechanically-produced fac-siiniles of some aoci«nt example, and so 

 far, bearing noiniual resemblance to Parthenon or Pitstum, the most ex- 

 cruciating violations of the style have been tolerated^why do I say tole- 

 rated?— they have even been regarded with self-complacent wonder ; and 

 because we have copied it piecemeal, we have given ourselves credit for ap- 

 preciating and relishing the severe simplicity of that order. Though it has 

 been repeated ad tiauseam, in hardly any one instance has the sentiment of 

 the style been fairly expressed; and notwithstanding, too, the lackadaisical 

 prating about " proportions," very rarely is any kind of proportion at all 

 observed between the order itself and the structure to which it is applied. 

 Instances have occurred before now, where otherwise very plain ordinary 

 buildings have, the in attempt togive them somethingof style, been croshed 

 into insignificance by huge Doric columns of greater diameter than the 

 breadth of the openings for windows; while, in others, the same order 

 has occasionally been reduced to minikin dimensions, anil applied as de- 

 coration to subordinate parts of the general mass ; which is surely a very 

 great mistake, there beiug nothing whatever in the constitution of the 

 Grecian-Doric — an order rigidly expressive of architectonic purpose and 

 nothing more, and possessing no elenieuts of coiubiuatiun and variety — to 

 recouimeud it for purposes of embellishment. There would be something 

 rational in taking the order merely as a type to be modified according to the 

 exigencies of the particular design, and if needs be, even enriched. But no ; 

 that must not be thought of,— that would be quite illegitimate, and would 

 be reprobated aa " tampering with the orders," whereas the abusing or 



misusing them by preposterous mis-application is, it seems, perfectly le- 

 gitimate and secundum artem ; though, in my poor oi>inioo, au architect 

 may as well give us columns of his own invention at once, as mar the 

 effect of an ancient order by joining it on, and mixing it up with, what does 

 not at all agree with it. At the worst, were the invention bad, the whole 

 work would be as likely as not to be of a piece throughout ; at any rate 

 the genuine and classical would not be degraded by being made to associ- 

 ate with the vulgar and mean. Architects should learn to rely more upon 

 themselves for detail, and less upon their barefaced and wholesale bor- 

 rowings, which borrowing system has, if nothing else objectionable in it, 

 this unlucky tendency — that it relaxes industrious study, and renders ar- 

 chitects prone to rely upon the merit of what is not their own, as excusing 

 the bad that really belongs to them. 



II. It would seem that professional men, who may be supposed to have 

 studied the orders thoroughly, can do no more with them than those who 

 are not architects. Just as they find them ready prepared to their bands, 

 so do they make use of them, without any more ceremonious process of 

 appropriation than that which is expressed by the euphuistic term "ab- 

 straction." Perhaps their study of them is not of the most fructifying 

 kind : to learn to talk learnedly about dales and the histories of styles, 

 and to know to the fraction of an inch all the dimensions of the Par- 

 thenon, is a very dillerent matter from understanding architectural design ; 

 knowledge of the former kind constitutes for the architect only the mate- 

 rials for and aids to his proper artistic study. After all our so-called study 

 of Grecian architecture, what have we made of it? Have we acquired 

 from it the power of producing anything in congenial taste ? \t itb copy- 

 ing we began — which was excusable enough, — and wiih copying we go 

 on, and are likely to do so to the end of the chapter, till we lay it aside 

 altogether, for we do not care to take the first step towards any advance 

 beyond the mere copying point. Truly, we have most singular notions of 

 studying the antique, for we learn nothing more from it than what lies on 

 the immediate surface, and mimick rather than imitate it ; nor do we even 

 avail ourselves, as we easily might do, of the varieties of the Greek orders 

 which the Greeks themselves have left us. Have we as yet even so much 

 as attempted to turn to account the idea for a four-faced Greek-Ionic capi- 

 tal, held out to us by that singular example in the temple of Apollo, at 

 Bassoe, — an example, perhaps, all the more valuable because it is sug- 

 gestive of further improvement ? We seem to search out and accumulate 

 examples only in order to bury them again in museums and in books. 

 There are a few charming specimens of antique inventiuns for capitals in 

 the British Museum, but for any use that is made of them they might 

 about as well be at the bottom of the Thames at once. Has any service 

 been rendered to architecture practically by the specimens lately discovered 

 in Asia Minor by Texier, (who, oddly enough, was sent out thither by the 

 French government, for the French make no use of the Creek and Asiatic 

 orders,) — has a single idea been adopted from them ? 



III. If it may be judged of in its present state, Cockerell's building for 

 the new Bank at Manchester does not promise to be any great architectu- 

 ral achievement. It may not unfairly be said to exhibit a sort of traresti 

 Greek style, a Doric order, borrowed from that of the temple of Nemesis at 

 Rhamnus(the shafts of whose columns are fluted only just at foot and top), 

 being employed not for the entire elevation, but merely as decoration to 

 the lower division or ground floor, in three-quarter, consequently, attached 

 columns, and so wide apart (for there are five trigljphs over every inter- 

 column) as to be totally contrary to Greek ideas of proportions for inter- 

 coluuiniation in that order. Greater conformity to charateristic proportions 

 might have been expected from one who descants so flueutly ex cathedra-^ 

 more fluently, perhaps, than perspicuously — on the doctrine of propvrtiom. 

 However, such violation of strict architectural Dorism is not greater than 

 that of filling in the three centre intercolumns with large arched triple or 

 Anglo-Venetian windows. The upper part of the front will be a sort of 

 heavy Attic, of which the merit may be that it is unborrowed. It could 

 be wished thai the order had been equally nondescript, for then the whole 

 would have been stamped by greater uiiginality — at least, greater con- 

 sistency; and whatever his invention for the purpose might have been, the 

 Professor could hardly have been a degree more heterodox than he has 

 been in the use which he has now made of Greek orthodoxy. 



IV. One of the objections raised by way of answer to what I said in 

 regard to a church being lighted on its sides by clerestory windows alone, 

 does not apply either to Mr. Wightwick's building, or the other mentioned 

 by me, because that circumstance does not, in either instance, in the slight- 

 est degree affect external character, no part of the exterior being visible 

 except the froat, M'indows are so expressive io a Gothic church, and 



