1841.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



170 



Street, is just dead, and has left property to the value of nearly one mil- 

 lion sterlirg: Sic tmmit gloria mimdi. — I declare that I am getting quite 

 edifying. 



THE PALLADIAN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTS. 



Associated with the Palladian architects, is a name deservingly 

 worthy of mention, for it is that of Kent. The taste of this ingenious 

 artist,' found, as it is, in the English mansion and in the palaces of the 

 great, charms us at first by its luxuriance, and then leads us to closer 

 inspection, from a certain correctness of feeling aptly displayed. His 

 claim to this fellowship with the Palladian school rests upon the felici- 

 tous manner in which he caught its sentiment, and the ricli and varied 

 assistance he threw into the Palladian structure. Confining his etibrts 

 more to fancy than to skill, subduing his proportions more for the eye 

 than for utility, he comes before us as the artist rather than as the 

 architect, lavishing his exuberant ideas upon an interior, and unfet- 

 tered by the many annoyances to taste which the calculating architect 

 feels. There is an air of poetry in his conceptions admirably adapted 

 to soften and to please; forms of carelessness ami ease crowd around 

 to soothe the wealthy inmate ; there are the gleanings from nature 

 appreciated by all, and there classic forms and allusions appear to en- 

 chant the refined. 



Kent was one of a class who are lovers of antiquity, and over whose 

 minds its wonderful creations act like a charm, and in whose hearts 

 its beauties feed a passion. We find such painting the sky and 

 peopling it with angels; throwing upon the walls figures of elegance, 

 quaintness or dignity ; carrying the whole harmony of a design into 

 the saloon or gallerv, and scattering it amidst an assemblage of forms 

 without perplexing any : making the design to appear conspicuous 

 and happy, even when associated with the noble, free, and graceful 

 outlines of the sculpture. 



I have placed Kent thus soon in the list of the artists of his school, 

 from the necessity there appears to be to introduce to the notice of 

 the influential, men of his particular stamp of genius. Not so much 

 to criticise the excellencies of design, as to hint at the talents of many, 

 gifted as he was, who are forgotten or despised, in the rusli after 

 foreigners. It would be well for the sapient, spectacled virtuosi (who 

 sni If talent from the south long before the genius of their choice is 

 born), if they would take their cold, starch, accommodating fancy into 

 some of the mansions graced by his free yet careful hana. Why do 

 the fraternity hesitate to patronize native genius ? Why do these 

 gentlemen, whose very fancy comes, like mushrooms, out of impurity, 

 turn their squeamish patronage elsewhere? There must be some 

 miserable prejudice afloat in the world of art, arising out of pedantry, 

 and inflated eflbrts after imitation, to account for this. It must be 

 that certain cold natures turn southward, or abroad, conscious of their 

 own frigidity and death-like fancy ; but it is not that there is no genius, 

 native to all that is beautiful and fair, that these ghost-like Mecsenases 

 hurry about, like unquiet spirits, for their favourite. 



oil, when shall this age of precedent form a school of its own? 

 when shall architecture and her sister arts be found linked in the em- 

 brace of nature, when shall Englishmen incite their countrymen to zeal, 

 and art glow with the colouring of health and truth? It is no mean 

 and trivial thing to design an interior. The very consciousness of 

 entire freedom, leads a poor artist into profuseness, and if he seeks a 

 relief by subduing a part, the meagre and shallow forms that appear 

 attest his poverty of mind. The aim in the interior is opposed in 

 every sense to the exterior, at which the passer by is to be arrested, 

 and from which he is to judge of the pomp or dignity of the inmate. 

 In the interior, the pleasure of the inmate has to be sought, and the 

 artist has to borrow from the treasury of his fancy, every device which 

 can divert and tranquilize. Through the contemplation of these the 

 mind must unbend and relax into tranquil pleasure. How rich, then, 

 and varied in its conceits, how sensitive in its structure, how refined 

 and delicate, how acute in its parts, must be that mind which can con- 

 ceive and execute a design so potent in its effects. It is not mere 

 imagination, it is more ; it is the imagination cooled and schooled, 

 training its active and perpetual creations according to principle and 

 rule, until it form a picture faithful and real, the original materials of 

 ■which are in nature. It is not mere fancy either which admires the 

 production, it is rather the fancy compelled by a skilful adaptation 

 from nature of proportion, harmony, and grace, and which is, in truth, 

 the mind affected under a familiar not an artijicial influence. 



Hence those artists who sport with flowers, and who fling, with a 

 seemingly careless hand, into design the lighter beauties of their art, 

 deserve attention, and deserve too, the same protection, assistance, 



and name, as Kent received ; but whose talents must droop and wither 

 so long as art holds in her body those worms that gnaw awav her 

 sicklv vitals. 



May 10. 



FuEDERiCK East. 



ARCHITECTURAL ROOM, ROYAL ACADEMY. 



We will dispense with further animadversions on the accommoda- 

 tion afforded to, or rather, withheld from, this department of the 

 Academy's annual exhibitions ; not because the slightest improvement 

 in that respect has taken place — not because there is no longer any 

 occasion for the oljservations we have already made at different times, 

 but because they may be repeated 'till farther notice,' as the playbills 

 say, — that is, to the end of the chapter, and until the Royal Academy, 

 painters, architects, and all shall have become Faimits Troe'. — And 

 trulv, if architects themselves generally, and the Professor of Archi- 

 tecture in particular, can patiently tolerate a system which produces 

 to them an annual insult, we do not see why we should allow ourselves 

 to be at all ruffled and put out of temper by it. Patience and long 

 suffering are no doubt virtues, and accordingly, as far as the Academy 

 is concerned, architects show themselves the most virtuous of the 

 human race ; — not but that there are bounds even to patience, and if 

 pushed beyond them, the illnatured world are apt to call it sheer dull- 

 ness and stupidity. 



In regard to the actual contents of the Architectural Room this sea- 

 son, we regret to find so very few designs for buildings of any promise 

 or importance, among those either in actual progress, or definitively 

 determined upon. We see many competition drawings, but then they 

 are for the most part only rejected ones, while those which are adopted 

 are kept back. For the Assize Courts at Lis-erpool, there are no fewer 

 than ten different designs — some of them rather indifferent ones — in- 

 cluding the successful one by Mr. Elmes, jun. But all of them are now, 

 it seems, set aside, it being now intended to comprise the Courts and 

 the St. George's Hall in one building. We will, however, first pay our 

 respects to the Professor of Architecture, who modestly contents him- 

 self with exhibiting a single drawing, and that of a rejected design, — 

 viz. Xo. 993, described in the catalogue as " A Study for a Front of a 

 Public Building," which turns out to be neither more nor less than his 

 design for the \Vest Front of the Royal Exchange, engravings of which 

 were published some few months ago in the Westminster Review. It 

 certainly is not deficient in richness, and has the merit of avoiding 

 that now common-place feature, a portico treated without any kind of 

 originality, and brought in for the nonce, whether there be any thing 

 else to agree with it or not. Still, it appears to us, keeping has not 

 been sufficiently attended to, there being a disproportion between the 

 large parasite columns and the rest, for not only do they overpower 

 some of the other parts, but actually squeeze them up and encumber 

 the facade unnecessarily and unmeaningly. It further strikes us as 

 singular that Mr. Cockerell should not have exhibited his model for 

 the same building also, as, besides that it would have been a striking 

 object in the room, and would have explained the_ whole design, we 

 have heard it sooken of as abounding with many effective parts. Still 

 even if he chose to withhold that, we think he might very well have 

 permitted us to see the designs of some other buildings either in pro- 

 gress or about to be begun by him, for instance the New Libraries at 

 Cambridge, the Sun Fire Office at the corner of Bartholomew Lane, 

 and the Taylor and Randolph Institute, at Oxford. Not having chosen 

 to do so, he has no right to be very much astonished should some per- 

 sons draw unfavourable inferences from it, and impute it to something 

 like a consciousness on his part that none of those designs are calcu- 

 lated to raise his professional reputation. 



Like Cockerell, Mr. Barry exhibits only one design, yet that one is 

 altogether new as to subject, and of considerable importance. We were 

 aware that Mr. B. liad been commissioned by Lord Francis Egertori to 

 prepare a design for Bridgevvater House, but hardly expected to be 

 gratified with sight of it so early. With regard to the subject itself, 

 it will not detract from his high reputation ; at the same tune we 

 question whether it will add to, or we should say, will raise it very 

 much, since an edifice of such a character and upon such a scale must 

 of course extend its author's celebrity. Grandeur and stateliness it 

 certainly possesses ; — and that is something, or rather a very great 

 deal, considering how very rarely we obtain those qualities or any 

 thing like them in structures where we might reasonably expect to 

 find them, and from which they certainly have not been excluded by 

 severe economy,— for instance, the unfortunate and deplorable a la 

 Regent Street Buckingham Palace. Bridgewater House is noble 

 and princely in asoect, which is what cannot possibly be affirmed of 

 those two ducal m'ansions, Stafford House, and Wellington or Apsley 



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