1841.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



2.57 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK. 

 FASCICULUS XXIX. 



'• I must have liberty 

 Withal, as large a charter as the w imis, 

 To blow on Hliom I please." 



I. C.4.mpbell's Vitruvius Britamiicus contains a design for a church, 

 by himself, — "an origin.il invention," as he calls it, — which is nothing 

 more than an Ionic prostyle, pseudo-peripteral along its sides, so far 

 tolerably Grecian as to its plan, but a mere parody of Grecian archi- 

 tecture, as to style. The east end has a large Venetian window, 

 which is the only one in the building, but he says, it would give suffi- 

 cient light to the whole interior ; and if so, it is a pity the hint has 

 never been taken by any one else for structures of that class, instead 

 of cutting up and crowding their designs with a multiplicity of win- 

 dows, that become so many blemishes, as is the case with St. Martin's 

 Church. In all the various styles of pointed architecture, windows 

 are principal and almost indispensable features, they and doorways 

 being the chief source of decoration, and of character; whereas they 

 are so much at variance with either the Grecian or the Roman style, 

 if intended to be kept up with tolerably consistency, as to be hardly 

 admissible, more especially where the general idea is aiTected to be 

 borrowed from that of an ancient temple, whither it be a peristylar or 

 merely a prostyle one. Its windows detract very materially from the 

 design of St. Pancras' Church ; and when it is viewed obliquely, the 

 flank of the building produces a harsh and disagreeable contrast with 

 the portico — which last is not disfigured, as too frequently happens 

 with any apertures of the kind. That there is authority for windows 

 in ancient structures, is undeniable, because those of St. Pancras are 

 copied from the same edifice as the order itself, and the ornamental 

 details. But then, the application of such features is altogether dif- 

 ferent from what it is in the original precedent. In the last there are 

 only three at one end of the exterior ; in the professed copy there is 

 a range along each side, besides a series of smaller ones below, which 

 gives an air of insignificance to the whole. Were there no other ob- 

 jection against them, it is no small one that they quite contradict the 

 portico, indicating as they do not only that the interior is divided into 

 two floors, but that the ceiling of the lower one or ground floor, is not 

 half so high as the doors 1 Without entering the church, we may 

 guess that there is in reality no such division, but that the lower win- 

 dows, are merely intended to admit light beneath the galleries. The 

 question then becomes, what occasion can there be for windows just 

 there, provided the interior be otherwise sufficiently lighted, as it 

 certainly might be ? What occasion in fact for side windows at all 

 — unless indeed they can be made to contribute advantageously to ex- 

 ternal effect — when they might be dispensed with altogether, and a 

 building of the kind — a single spacious room — be lighted entirely 

 from the ceiling, in almost any way that would best suit the particular 

 design ? — If, for instance, there is a dome, let the light proceed chiefly, 

 if not exclusively, from that part of the ceiling plan, instead of the 

 concave of the dome being in comparative gloom and darkness, as is 

 the case at St. Paul's. One advantage attending the exclusion of side 

 windows — which except in the Gothic style are more injurious than 

 conducive to effect — would be that the walls being solid, noise from 

 the street would be obstructed. Whether smart Sunday bonnets in 

 the seats imder the galleries would be seen to so much advantage as at 

 present, is a different consideration — doubtless a most important one 

 in itself. The galleries themselves are a nuisance; and never have I 

 met with an arcliitect who did not cordially agree with me on that 

 point. The pew-system is not much better, though mightily in favour 

 with 



" A loyal Church, that keeps the rich and poor 

 Duly apart, nor blends the lord and boor. 

 'Tis sweet to witness jueH'S, nor mean, nor scant, 

 For those who pay, — -free seats for those who can't," &c. 



These lines are from a clever poem which has just issued from Albe- 

 marle-street — hitherto considered the seat of High-Church orthodoxy, 

 and conservatism ! 



II. In regard to the church I have just been speaking of (St. Pan- 

 eras,) I cannot help thinking that the design would have been very 

 materially improved, had the two caryatic wings, been placed at the 

 west instead of the east end ; so as to combine with the portico, and 

 form an extended fa9ade. A very striking composition might have 

 been so produced, one no less distinguished by picturesque variety 

 than by its richness. Those wings would have balanced the tower 

 above, and given a pyramidical outline to the whole structure as viewed 



in front. Neither would it have been the least recommendation of 

 such arrangement, that the wings would have served to screen the in- 

 sipid side elevations. It would however have been further desirable 

 that instead of being merely stuck on to the body of the edifice, as at 

 present, they should be made to unite with it 'symmetrically, for at 

 present the upper line of the cornice ranges with no other line, but 

 falls about midway of the windows. 



III. Caryatides or aidhropostyle supports to an entablature, as they 

 may very properly be described, entirely upset the old-women critics' 

 fudge as to the different orders being proportioned after the human 

 figure, their proportions being more robust than those of the "manly 

 Doric." Whether these columnar ladies were matrons or virgins, is 

 a point I leave to be settled by the more curious, — and indeed, I almost 

 wonder that no one should as yet have given us some learned twaddle 

 in regard to it; — but it is certain that they are by no means of that 

 maypole appearance which those dames must have exhibited, who 

 stood for models of Ionic and Corinthian columns. After all it is pos- 

 sible that the Greeks borrowed the idea of Caryatides from Holland, 

 for they are most indisputably very Dutch built, and to all appearance 

 brawny enough to perform the office put upon them, without flinching. 



IV. If for no better one, it is for this last reason that I do not object 

 to the use of Caryatides, as being disagreeable to the feelings. Thank 

 heaven! my feelings are not quite so refined and super-refined as to 

 be shocked at beholding ladies of stone, bearing a burden they seenr 

 quite able to support. I should as soon think of expressing my sympa« 

 thy for the Cardinal Virtues which are frequently turned out of doors, 

 and doomed to keep watch on the outside of a building in all weathers, 

 while the Cardinal Vices, perhaps, are enjoying themselves very snugly 

 within. — As soon should I think of being mawkishy sentimental, and 

 compassionating some poor devil of a Neptune who is compelled to 

 stand as a sentinel on such a ticklish situation as the top of a pedi- 

 ment, to be there roasted in a broiling sun. It is wonderful how vastly 

 sentimental many people can be, provided the display of outrageously 

 fine feelings costs them nothing! Many a one who would almost pre- 

 tend to snivel at "Patience on a monument smiling at grief," would 

 drive over a poor old apple-woman and her stall, as unconcernedly as 

 if she were a mere stock and stone. And yet the Apple-woman is a 

 more perfect image of patience, than all the "Patiences" ever 

 sculptured, were there one upon every hypocritical monument that has 

 been erected. 



V. Panegyric, as Swift observes, " is all pork, with very little variety 

 of sauce : for there is no inventing terms of art, beyond our ideas; and 

 when our ideas are exhausted, terms of art must be so too." This 

 last remark certainly holds good, in regard to those writers and critics 

 who repeat what they have picked up in praise of Palladio and Jones, 

 prettv much as a parrot would repeat a pater-noster. They would 

 fain insist upon our believing that those worthies possessed every 

 architectural virtue and excellence ; but to dwell upon their merits, or 

 to examine the beauties of their edifices one by one, assigning to each 

 its due value, is more than they care to attempt, — for reasons perhaps, 

 well known to themselves, and not difficult to be divined by those who 

 are not arrant gulls. Very quickly indeed are their ideas of art ex- 

 hausted, for after they have uttered some stale commonplace, or vapid 

 truism they are completely aground. It may be questioned whether 

 "the celebrated Inigo Jones" would consider Goldicutt's publication 

 of Heriot's Hospital, particularly complimentary, since the account of 

 it is dispatched in less than a page and a half, without any thing being 

 said in regard to the structure itself. Yet its beauties certainly re- 

 quire to be carefully pointed out, for they are of a kind quite invisible 

 to unprejudiced eyes. Not so, however, the defects, they being glar- 

 inf enough. The entrance tower might be supposed to have been 

 intended as a whimsical burlesque on modern applications of the an- 

 cient orders ; and the whole is no better than an architectural hotch- 

 potch— an unintelligible. Babel-like jargon of styles jumbled up together. 

 Still, for aught I can tell, the Doric entrance and Corinthian patchwork 

 above it, may be precisely that part of the design which finds most 

 admirers. The great charm after all, I suspect, lies in the name of 

 Inigo Jones : take away that, and few persons would be able to dis- 

 cern any beauty or grandeur in it whatever. , ■ ., 



VI. In the " Magasin Pittoresque " it is said that the windmill, built 

 by him at Chesterton in Warwickshire, does Jones no less honour than 

 the palace of BUnhetm".' It is a wonder the writer did not favour us 

 with the information that luigo Jones was the father of the equally 

 " celebrated" Tom Jones, of whom there is a tolerably well written 

 life by one Mr. Henry Fielding, an author not very much inferior ta 

 some of the second-rate geniusses of our own enlightened age. 



