34 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[February, 



to the honours which devolve upon it, extending even to thf peerage, 

 in which it has founded so many great houses. Medicine is scarcely 

 less cared for, as in one shape or another it has scarcely less at the 

 present moment than a score of Sirs, many of them baronets, and since 

 the commencementof the present century it has numbered more nearly 

 lialf a handred than any lower number. The artists come next in 

 number, their president is always knighted, and their several depart- 

 ments of painting, sculpture, architecture and engraving have nothing 

 to complain of, having half a score knighthoods among them, six in the 

 Eoyal Academy. We will now skim over some of the other classes 

 which at different times in the last fifty years have been noticed, and 

 of course in such a list, we must be guilty of many omissions. We 

 find of astronomers and philosophers Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., G.C.B. 

 and Privy Councillor, Sir W. Herschel, Sir John Herschel, Bart., Sir 

 3ames Hall, Bart., Sir David Brewster, Sir John Robison, &c. ; of che- 

 mists, Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. ; of naturalists. Sir James Edward 

 Smith, Sir William Jackson Hooker, &c. ; of agriculturists, Sir John 

 Sinclair, Bart. ; of musicians. Sir George Smart, Sir John Stevenson, 

 &c. Antiquaries have as heralds and keepers of records political op- 

 portunities of promotion, and accordingly come off pretty well, they 

 number Sir Wm. Woods, Sir W. Betliam, .Sir Harris Nicolas, Sir 

 Kicolas Carlisle, Sir Henry Ellis, Sir Gardner Wilkinson, &c. Tra- 

 vellers and discovers also have a similar relation, and boast their Sir 

 Edward Parry, C.B., Sir John Franklin, C.B., Sir Jolm Ross, C.B., Sir 

 Alexander Bumes, Sir James Alexander, &c. Literary men have not 

 been so lucky. Sir Walter Scott's baronetcy being their principal. 



We think we have thus run over a list which will satisfy any rea- 

 sonable man that affairs are not so badly offin old England, and that in 

 the countiy where William Cobbett rose from the impasse of the 

 army to share in the legislation of the greatest empire of the world, 

 that there is something to be looked forward to by every man who 

 has talents to do good and diligence to exert them. 



We have thus defended our authorities from the general charge of 

 neglecting scientific rewards, but we cannot so easily acquit them of 

 indifference towards a profession which has the fairest claim upon 

 their attention. The military engineers come in with the rest of the 

 army, the naval engineers have had their Sir Robert Seppings, and Sir 

 Edward Symonds, but the civil engineers have received only one 

 knighthood, and that too conferred for what was considered an archi- 

 tectural labour. We think that the profession has just ground to com- 

 plain of this, they are rising in public estimation, possess good general 

 rank, have performed most important public services, and yet have 

 been passed over as to the most coveted reward. The Institute has 

 received a royal charter, engineering is a recognized educational fa- 

 culty, for which a regius professorship has been founded, honorary 

 degrees have been conferred upon its members, and the president has 

 received a seat in the senate of the great university of the empire, so 

 that certainly as far as qualification goes, there is not the least ground 

 for this holding back of favour. Two years ago we had to complain 

 ofthis, audwe are sorry to renew our murmurs now. In other pro- 

 fessions there are certain defined offices, the holders of which generally 

 receive honours, and we do not see why it should not be so with the 

 engineers. The Presidents of the Royal Society have had a baronetcy, 

 as also the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the President 

 of the Linnsan Society, and the President of the Royal Academy 

 knighthood. The government lawyers, medical men, painters, sculp- 

 tors, architects, musicians, heralds, naval engineers, &c., both in Eng- 

 land and Ireland are generally knighted, so that so far from a precedent 

 being wanted, an omission only seems necessary to be supplied. If 

 we look at our triumphant progress in railways, bridges, steam navi- 

 gation, &c., in which we are almost without rivals, we think that there 

 can be no difficulty in selecting such of the authors of them as are 

 fully deserving of any honour the government can bestow. We think 

 the President of the Institute, and the government engineer both in 

 England and Ireland should always be knighted, and we think the same 

 honour should be conferred on the most distinguished railway and 

 marine engineers. 



James Watt has had more public statues erected to him than the 

 Duke of Wellington. The nation has expressed its opinion, let its 

 representatives confirm it. 



A Cornish engine has been recently erected on the New Soutbwark Water 

 Works, in the Battersea Fields, Ijy Mr. W. West, and nianulactured by 

 Messrs. Harvey & Co., of Hayle tuundry. on llic same jirincjple as (bat 

 erected by those gentlemen on ihe Kist Li)ndiin Water Works, at Old Ford, 

 and described in the Journal. Her cylinder is SI imdi diameter, lenf;tli of 

 stroke lOJ ft. in Ihe cylinder, and 10 ft. in the iiumi>. working a 32 incli 

 plunger pole, with the patent valves by Messrs. Harvey 8<. West, which are 

 so constiiicted, and the operation so easy, that it would be dilticult to j¥!r- 

 suade a common observer of the existence ot a valve therem. 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK. 

 FASCICULUS XXIII. 



" I must have liberty 

 Withal, as large a charter as the winds. 

 To blow on whom I please." 



I. Speaking of Versailles, Theodore Hook says: " as to its extent, 

 its galleries, its saloons and all that sort of thing, it is internally strik- 

 ing ; but any thing more hideously friglitful as a building — speaking 

 of it architecturally — never was seen. The front, as you approach it 

 from Paris, is indescribably mean. The garden front is bald and grace- 

 less — the associations connected with it, and the splendour of its in- 

 ternal decorations may and do give it a palatial character: but it is 

 an exceedingly ugly affair." This criticism is not at all too severe, 

 for the exterior is in fact the very maximum of littleness, — so far 

 miraculous as it shows that it is possible to contrive a building of 

 great extent and enormous cost that shall nevertheless be altogether 

 destitute of effect, and possess no more grandeur — that is, artistical 

 grandeur and dignity, than a huge barrack of the same size. So far 

 Versailles well deserves to be styled — as it has been before now, one 

 of the reondtrs of the world. 



II. Among the qualifications usually insisted upon as requisite to 

 an architect — of some of which, by the by, the necessity is not very- 

 apparent — we do not find enumerated the one which of all others would 

 seem to be the most indispensable, that is, when we eome to something 

 more than mere building and construction, and consider architecture as 

 a fine art. The qualification thus accidentalhj overlooked, as if it 

 were the least important of any, — something which it is very well to 

 possess, but which an architect can contrive to make shift without, is 

 what for want of a definite term in our own language to express it, we 

 must call " Kunstatnn" which word implies a good deal more than our 

 English " Taste." It would seem that this and this alone distinguishes 

 the architect from the builder — taking those names not in their pro- 

 fessional and technical meaning, but in the sense of artist, and non- 

 artist, or at best artist at second hand, a mere plodder who stands in 

 the same degree of relationship to the other that a mechanical rhvnier, 

 a scribbler of Album verses does to a true poet, cut mens divintor. 

 Heaven knows! it is not every one who confidently writes himself 

 architect, that has legitimate pretensions, or indeed, any pretensions 

 at all to such title, if it is to be taken in its nobler meaning. Which 

 being the case, it is by no means very ditticult to understand why so 

 many of them affect to hold artistical talent in their profession so very 

 cheap, treating it as something of an altogether secondary consideration. 

 Nothing is more common than to hear such people exclaim " O ! that 

 is all mere matter of taste and opinion." Most true, yet it is not 

 every one who can distinguish between good and bad taste, — much 

 less who is able to display superior taste in his own productions. It 

 is true, taste is not absolutely indispensable on every occasion ; never- 

 theless it is of paramount importance in edifices laying claim to be 

 considered works of fine art, for in such case wanting sesthetic value, 

 they want what, in that character is most essential to them. So far 

 therefore, there is a very material difference between being a most ex- 

 cellent builder and an accomplished architect — and master of the art: 

 not that excellence in construction is no merit in itself, or one that 

 may be dispensed with at pleasure, but it is one which is negative as 

 far as the aesthetic value of an edifice is concerned. Health and 

 strength of body do not constitute beauty : in themselves, indeed, they 

 are more essential requisites, but still they are distinct qualities from 

 the other, although they, to a certain extent, contribute to it. In like 

 manner does good building — able construction contribute to the value 

 of an architectural production, but it cannot be received as an equiva- 

 lent for a;sthetic beauty, where this latter exists not, or perhaps, is 

 most obviously and offensively deficient. This distinction between the 

 Useful — the Necessary, and the Beautiful ought never to be lost sight 

 of; least of all in these our mechanical, engineering times, when they 

 are apt to be confounded together; and when it not unfrequently hap- 

 pens that mere utility and economy alone are considered all in all, and 

 all-sufficient; and taste to be something which it is as well to have as 

 not, provided it comes of itself, and can be had without trouble, but 

 whicli is not worth any study or pains to secure it. 



III. Architects are somewhat unjust and inconsistent in depreciating 

 a class of artists whom they themselves have called into existence, 

 namely, those styling themselves Decorators ; for the latter would cer- 

 tainly not possess the control they now do, were it not that the others 

 have, in a manner, surrendered up to them one entire and certainly 

 very important province of their own art, — that one, in fact, where 



