1841.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



1.5.5 



Fig. 2. 



Fif?. 1. 



For the sake o ^perspicuity, only one side opening from the plug B 

 has been adverted to. But the plug is always made with three open- 

 ings, as shown in fig. "2, at c, m, and N ; by which it will be seen that 

 it is impossi6/e to shut more than one of the chambers, D or J, at the 

 same time. The engineer, therefore, has not the power of completely 

 shutting off the steam by means of the cock, nor could a successful at- 

 tempt be made to effect thi« by plugging the pipe in the dome, the 

 material of the /atter not being of sufficient strength to bear as high a 

 pressure as the boiler. — Trans. Soc. Arts. 



S. L. AND THE PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE. 



Sir. — The freedom of some of the comments in my last Fasciculus 

 must, no doubt, have startled your correspondent S. L,, and also con- 

 vinced him that I fully act, /. (. write, up to my motto, which is very 

 much more than can be affirmed of every one who bears a motto. It 

 is evident he considers me as having made much too "free with the 

 Professor of architecture at the Royal Academy;" just as if the 

 Professor was a schoolmaster — some village Solomon whose sceptre is 

 his birch, and whose subjects are bound to listen with awe to whatever 

 he utters. What indecorum there can be in animadverting upon 

 opinions enounced by the Professor in his public capacity, I cannot 

 possibly conceive. Similar freedoms are taken every day with per- 

 sons and personages who are quite as important — at least people fancy 

 them so — as Professors of architecture : a truth well known to Lord 

 Melbourne, and Lord John Russell, and to a great many others before 

 them. 



It is, I believe, generally understood that the freedom of remark 

 which would be indelicate and reprehensible towards private indi- 

 viduals, is perfectly allowable towards public men, and those who hold 

 public situations which give an influential authority to their opinions. 

 On the last account it is, that opinions promulgated ex cathedni should 

 be narrowly watched and scrutinized ; and if they will not bear a little 

 rough handling when examined, they are fit only to be bandboxed in 

 lavender, and brought out, not in the lecture room, but in the drawing 

 room. 



For my part, I hold the squeamishuess and affected delicacy which 

 usually pervades architectural criticism to be not only exceedingly 

 silly, but exceedingly mischievous into the bargain ; for they tend in 

 fact often to stifle criticism itself just at the very time when it might 

 be applied with success; and grant impunity to some of the greatesj 



delinquents, and to the abominations perpetrated by them, under the 

 paltry (iretence of its being a delicate and invidious task to speak of 

 men and matters belonging immediately to our own dav. This ex- 

 cessive caution — not to call it time-serving obsequiousness and coward- 

 ice — is almost peculiar to those who write on architecture : most cer- 

 tainly we find very little of it in literary criticism ; where the merits 

 of living writers, let them stand ever so high, are often discusssed with 

 a freedom that is almost startling, or at the best very unceremonious. 



However, all that 1 have just been saying will be thought little better 

 than evasive remarks, under cover of which I am fain to sneak off and 

 screen myself from the allegation made by S. L., and therefore now , 

 say in reply to it, that erroneous or not, the impression left u|)on mv- 

 self, and a good many other persons also, I believe, was that the Pro- 

 fessor's views were so far unfavourable to Gothic architecture as to 

 discourage it most decidedly at the present day. To be sure he ex- 

 pressed a decent "for-good-manners'-sake" admiration of it, just of 

 that sort and no more which may be professed for any other bv-gone 

 and worn-out style of the art — for Egyptian or Byzantine curiosities in 

 it. An enthusiastic devotee in his rapturous reverence for the sublime 

 Sir Christopher Wren, — who, by the bye, produced Temple Bar and 

 sundry other pieces of veritable architectural bathos — the Professor is 

 evidently ill-disposed towards the practical application or adoption of 

 Gothic at the jiresent day. So likewise is S. L. ; and therefore both 

 of them may probably object to the style selected for the new Houses 

 of Parliament, and may also greatly prefer Buckingham Palace to 

 Windsor Castle — perhaps regret that Mela Britannica's advice was not 

 taken in regard to the latter structure; had which been done every 

 vestige of it would have disappeared, and a low moderate-sized Gre- 

 cian edifice, a mere parallelogram in plan, would have been substi- 

 tuted for it, as worthier to grace the acropolis of Windsor I 



It would seem that mullioned windows do not accord very well with 

 plate glass, but " are more suitable for casements with small panes of 

 glass than for the large squares now in use." Now it mav fairlv be 

 admitted that small panes do not at all disfigure Gothic windows — do 

 not produce the same mean and palty effect they would in others; 

 but it does not therefore exactly follow that they are indispensable to 

 propriety of character, because, if well designed in other respects, the 

 windows lose nothing by each compartment being filled with single 

 plates of glass. On the contrary, the use of glass of such dimensions 

 removes in a great measure the objection apt to be entertained against 

 mullions of suitable proportions, as obstructing light; because, owing to 

 the greater size and transparency of the glass, as much light is trans- 

 mitted through the same space interrupted only by bold mullions, as 

 where the mullions are very scanty, and the general surface con>ists 

 of a meshwork of lead in which the glass is fixed. The chief diffe- 

 rence between a window with small panes and oue without divisions 

 of the glass, is that in the latter case, if the entire aperture loses 

 somewhat of the character of a glazed Gothic window, it will still 

 resemble what is equally beautiful in the same style, namely an open 

 screen with unglazed compartments. 



But if Gothic is inapplicable because of so slight a difference as that 

 arising from the windows being glazed withlarge pieces of glass in- 

 stead of diminutive panes, how is it possible for us to reconcile our- 

 selves to the infinitely greater departure from the genius of Grecian 

 architecture, by introducing, as we most freely do, into that style, 

 features not only unknown to, but absolutely at variance with it, not 

 only windows, chimneys, balustrades, attics, &c. ; but successive tiers 

 of windows and windows throughout, windows within porticos, &c. ? 

 Again, small panes set in lead are to the full quite as unsuitable for 

 windows in Girecian or Roman architecture, as they are siiitabie in 

 the Gothic style, which being the case, have we not a right, according 

 to S. L.'s notions of consistency and propriety, to be very mucii 

 shocked at the semi-Gothic or Gothicly glazed windows of St. Paul's 

 cathedral ? 



S. L. talks of the " difficulty of persuading persons to adopt Gothic, 

 who are not possessed of antiquarian taste." How happens it, then, 

 that we have so many soi-disant Gothic churches and Got!:ic man- 

 sions which are in utter defiance of antiquarian taste or any other ? 

 why are we doomed to behold so much hole-in-the-wall Gothic — so 

 many castellated fancies a /a i^!(gor ? For no other reason than Ije- 

 cause there is a bigotted and fashionable prejudice for the mere name of 

 the style among persons who have not the slightest notion whatever of 

 the style itself. The difficulty is not to persuade people to adopt, but to 

 dissuade them from thinking of at all adopting a style which they will 

 not allow to be properly treated. 



Again, S. L. assures us that when modern architects design in the 

 Gothic style, their object is imitation, but that when they employ 

 Grecian or Roman, their aim is invention" .' I Now no man would 

 have ventured upon so very bold an assertion unless he had previously 

 fortified himself and screwed up his courage to that pitch by an extra 



