1810.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEEERAND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL 



233 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK. 

 FASCICULUS LXIX. 



"I must have liberty 

 ■Willial, as large a charter as the wiuds, 

 To blow on whom I please." 



I. Even should Burton's arch prove able to bear Wyatt's Wellington com- 

 fortably, it is more than in all present likelihood good taste will be able to 

 do. If those vvlio are mainly concerned and interested in hoisting up the 

 statue to that " bad eminence" and unenviable point of exaltation for it, have 

 felt all along so assured of a satisfactory result, how happens it that they have 

 not imparted some degree of that same comfortable assurance to the public, 

 if only to stop the mouth of criticism ? Some half dozen years ago, indeed, a 

 mere flat pasteboard sort of scheme of the figure was stuck up on the top of 

 the arch for a day or two,— and a strange figure it cut, which may have heen 

 one reason for taking it down again as expeditiously as possible, instead of 

 allowing time for its being generally seen. In the interim, which has been 

 a tolerably long one, nothing farther has been done in the way of precau- 

 tionary trial, or if it has been done, the public have not heen informed of it. 

 Yet most assuredly it would not have been amiss, had a good-sized model of 

 tlie structure with the equestrian figure upon it, been prepared, and exhibited 

 at the lioyal Academy ; besides which there should have been perspective 

 views also taken from dilTerent points, in order the better to determine what 

 would be the effect of such contemplated " improvement" of the arch, upon 

 the other buildings and objects in its immediate vicinity. Hardly could the 

 expense attending such model and drawings have been made any objection 

 or difficulty, where so goodly and serious a sura as Thirty-thousand pounds 

 or thereabouts was to be expended, and that upon a single work of art. It 

 is well should the managers not prove to have been penny-wise and pound- 

 foolish in the matter, and should the work so liberally subscribed for, not 

 verify the proverb of buying a pig in a poke. The thirty thousand pounds 

 for the bran-new statue by our modern Phidias, is not much less than what 

 the priceless Elgin Marbles cost the country ; or than what would have secured 

 to us theentire Houghton collection, and prevented its going out of the country, 

 Alas ! for those days ! Among the whole monied aristocracy, among all our 

 wealthy collectors, nay among our city millionaires, there was not one who 

 cared to glorify his own name by inseparably uniting it with that of the 

 Houghton Collection. Many could easily have snatched the prize from the 

 grasp of the Russian Catherine, by merely taking up a pen, and giving a 

 cheque for the sum demanded — a sum that has frequently been staked at the 

 gaming table without compunction or hesitation. 



II. By way of apology for, or in order the better to reconcile us to the 

 Wyatt Wellington — which might adorn some other situation , being put where 

 it will prove a Wellington " out of place," we are told that the idea has been 

 sanctioned by the consent of thelateandpresentSovereign. Now as to William 

 IV. it is notorious tliat he neither had nor pretended to have any taste at all 

 for art — and that last was some merit; he neither knew nor eared about it ; 

 and as to the consent of her present Majesty, it may fairly be suspected that 

 it is merely a negative one. Like Dickens' Mrs. Davis^ — if such very un- 

 courtly comparison be allowable — she does not care to be " worritted" about 

 the matter, — though of course there is no such word as " worrit" in the vo- 

 cabulary of royalty, — so leaves the managers and subscribers to please them- 

 selves in the aftair. — Granting that the Arch may be able to bear the enor- 

 mous weight that will be put upon, secure enough for some time to 

 come, yet the time will come, sooner perhaps than is thought of, when the 

 structure will require repair, and when it be so loaded, will not that be an 

 operation attended with some hazard, as well as very great difficulty ? It 

 will not be matter for much surprize should it eventually be found necessary 

 to fortify the work by converting the hollow parts within the structure into 

 •olid masses of earth, concrete, and brickwork. At all events should the 

 scheme be persisted in, we shall have a huge Wellington mounted on guard 

 before little A psiey House, which for an ^rcA-duke's mansion is as lilliputian 

 in taste as it is in dimensions. Instead of giving us a mere " sentinel" statue, 

 might not the artist have properly thrown a little allegory into his work, — 

 have represented the hero of Waterloo not exactly fast asleep, but merely 

 taking a nap, while perfectly wide awake ? — or rather, putting that said Nap 

 to flight. 



HI. Speaking of the decoration of rooms and of his conversations with 

 the late Stuttgart architect, Thouret (who died January 17, 1845) on the 

 subject, Goethe says that the imifa/ion of granite, porphry, and all sorts of 

 marbles, &c., is matter of great importance (se/irtmc/iti^). Constquently he 

 for one — and his opinion may be allowed to stand for something, even should 



it not entirely remove the scruples of the ultra-conscientious, — did not look 

 upou such imitation as mere " sham," unworthy the dignity of genuine archi- 

 tecture. The deception is surely of perfectly legitimate as well as innocent 

 kind, for we all know that in the most sumptuous palaces or other buildings 

 the internal walls never are or can be of solid marble, at the utmost are 

 only incrusted with such material. So long as the construction of a build- 

 ing be sound, and calculated for durability, what matters it though the 

 beauty which array it, and captivates the eye, be only skin-deep ? Fresco 

 paintings themselves are only superficial ; the external surface once gone, no 

 redressing or repolishing can revive it. It is no argument against the imita- 

 tion of costly and perhaps somewhat inapplicable materials also, that it is 

 apt to be very paltry. It certainly is not necessarily so, for it may, on the 

 contrary, be very excellent ; and as the processes by which it is produced 

 partake more of mere manipulation tlian art, excellence — positive merit can 

 safely be ensured for it beforehand, which is assuredly no small advantage. 

 Those who affect to despise all deception of the kind, may be left to recon- 

 cile to themselves as well as they can, that of gilding, by means of which 

 the most valuable of all metals is counterfeited for purposes to which that or 

 any other metal would be perfectly inapplicable, — picture frames, for in- 

 stance, which though apparently of gold are, and are known to be, only of 

 ordinary wood gilded over. 



IV. Barry is now not only eclipsing Soane, but absolutely extinguishing 

 him hit by bit, at least in the purlieus of Westminster. Poor Soane ! not 

 only has the exterior of his " Board of Trade" been so completely refashion- 

 ed, as to be metamorphosed into a different piece of architecture, but his 

 Scala Regia and Gallery, and his Law Courts — on which last he prided himself 

 so especially, are doomed to pass away,without leaving a wreck behind, or other 

 memorial of them than the wretchedly vile engravings of them in his " Pub- 

 lic and Private Buildings," a work remarkable for nothing so much as the 

 extraordinary penuriousness with which it was got up, more particularly the 

 old architect's character for " munificence" considered. Poor Soane ! pity 

 that he had not the heart to he a little more liberal towards himself, — some- 

 what less positively stingy. Poor Soane ! too, it will be doubly, if Britton 

 should now pass by him without mention, when recording the other distin- 

 guished patrons and persons of talent whom it has been his good fortune to 

 attract to himself during his long and industrious career. Will he now cut 

 " his esteemed friend Sir John Soane," or will he recant, — at least qualify 

 his former admiration by giving a dark a la Rembrandt portrait of him ? — 

 Nous verrons. 



V. Welby Pugin has obtained a distinction very rarely conferred in any 

 shape, upon members of the architectural profession, however eminent they 

 may be, namely, that of having an engraved portrait of him published. To 

 say the truth, architects are treated as a sort of Impersonals by the public, — 

 creatures without bodies, therefore it is to be presumed, all intellect, all 

 mind. At any rate, it seems to be taken for granted that no one cares to 

 behold what manner of men they are in outward shape and physiognomy. 

 You shall look over catalogues and hsts of portraits, and among thousands 

 will scarcely find one of a single architect. It fares very little better with 

 foreign architects than with English ones: portraits of recent or living ones 

 are rare phenomena. Things of the kind may be painted, but they are not 

 transferred to copper or stone, ^ro lono pullico. There is a published por- 

 trait of Cagnola, one- — nay two, if not more, of Schinkel ; beyond which 

 number the list can hardly be extended. It may be questioned if there 

 be one even of Zwirner, although a likeness of him ought to be in request 

 with the multitude, he being the architect employed upon the works at 

 Cologne Cathedral- What Nagler will say of Zwirner is not likely to be 

 known — at the rate his work progresses — till some twenty years hence- 

 When he does reach him, it is to be hoped that he will not blunder so egre- 

 giously, as he did about Pugin — or rather the two Pugins, father and son, of 

 whom he completely made mincemeat, by chopping them both up together, 

 and stuffing the compound into one article. 



VI. The second series of Allom's " France Illustrated," is decidedly infe- 

 rior to the first, as regards interest of subjects. In that respect it exhibits a 

 deplorable falling-off ; and hardly less than deplorable it is to find him, after 

 giving us such delicious interiors of the Madelaine, the Pantheon, and several 

 of the apartments at Fontainebleau — that excepted, called the Salon d'Abdi- 

 catioii, a very commonplace room, remarkable for nothing more than a very 

 big-headed Napoleon in an arm-chair, — he should dish up for the second 

 course, such watergruel things as monotonous landscapes — chiefly all moun- 

 tains and skies, that we seem to have met with before, again and again, there 

 being nothing in sceneiy of the kind to individualize and extinguish one par- 

 ticular spot from another, wherefore one or two specimtns are as good as 



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