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THi: CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCIHTECT'S JOURNAL. 



[November, 



seek deliglit wliere the foot would not willingly tread — tlie purlieus 

 of misery and vice. All the pictorial charms of light and shade, and 

 colour are to be found in subjects whicli shall not degrade them. There 

 is no lack of architecture that elevates instead of depressingthe mind, 

 both by its grandeur of design, the work of genius, and by the asso- 

 ciations it calls up. In a word, in every branch of art let what is low 

 and me.in be discaided, however it may tempt the artist under the idea 

 of the picturesque." — To tlie above advice which is very nuuh needed, 

 might be added another wholesome caution — namely, that in subjects 

 more or less professedly architectural, the architecture itself should 

 be treated as principal — as that in which the main interest lies, and 

 not as too frequently happens, exhibited little more than nominally 

 being nearly slurred over, while the value of the composition is made 

 to depend upon accessories and casual circumstances^l-'erhaps on 

 ataffagi and figures, or some exaggerated contrast of light and shade, 

 improbable if not impossible, — a pyebald medley of midday and mid- 

 night. As to architectural character, whether arising from the ensem- 

 ble or the detail, that is not to be looked for in the " illustrations" an- 

 nually manufactured to suit the taste of the million. We have views 

 of Windsor Castle, wherein the building itself shows itself only as a 

 mere speck in the landscape, the real view being that of trees and 

 cattle, or figures in the foreground. In many cases, indeed, such 

 mode of representing and "illustrating" buildings is not only highly 

 convenient, but suitable and advantageous also, the things themselves 

 being of no interest, or at all worth being shown. This may be affirmed 

 of almost the greater part of topographical illustrations — views of the 

 most insipid and common place houses, &c. imaginable, "of no value 

 except to their owners." 



VI. One might almost imagine that scarcely a building of any note 

 had been erected in Germany within the last five and twenty years, — 

 that Berlin, Potsdam, Munich, Dresden, Vienna, Hamburgh, &c. could 

 not boast of a single new architectural feature of any merit, that 

 Schinkel, Klenze, Gartner, MoUer, Gutensohn, OhlmuUer, Semper, &c. 

 bad executed nothing — nothing at least deserving the attention of the 

 English public. How else are we to explain the neglect which modern 

 German architecture has experienced from those who set themselves 

 up as luminaries of taste, to enlighten the public, and to "illustrate" 

 by their pencils the tiolabilia of other countries? — Our consolation 

 must be that perhaps we lose very little by such subjects as those 

 above alluded to being passed by unnoticed by our manufacturers of 

 views and "illustrations," — things for the most part made up from 

 slovenly, hurried sketches, which the engraver is left to make out as 

 well as he can, and to dress up to the best of his ability. What such 

 productions want in regard to truth and fidelity, is amply made up for 

 by imagination and invention, — which have ever been reckoned among 

 the more valuable qualities of art. Besides which there is one very 

 great advantage attending the disregard of truth-telling accuracy, 

 which is, that it does not forestal the gratification to be derived from 

 viewing the buildings and places themselves, since they are generally 

 found to be altogether diflTerent from their pretended representations. 

 Thus when seen they make all the impression of perfect novelty, and 

 produce double surprise — agreeable surprise at finding them greatly 

 surpass expectation, and a queerish, indiscribable sort of surprise at 

 finding out how much we have been all along mialAfied by owlish 

 illustrators. 



VII. After seeing to-day the works at the New Houses of Parlia- 

 ment I feel most amiably disposed towards Mrs. Wright of "awful 

 conflagration" celebrity — whom 1 once, I believe, called a stupid old 

 Jessabel worthy of the pillory, for had she by timely interference pre- 

 vented the "accident," the splendid pile now rising to view would 

 never have been reared. It was a mercy that the old " Houses" were 

 burnt down when Ihey were ; since had the fire occurred during the 

 " reign" of James — tiiat is, the reign of James Wyatt "of execrable 

 memory," — we should have had some strange Gothicizings, sucli as 

 those which now strike us with astonislnnent in some of the buildings 

 still remaining in what was formerly the river front. Tlie great fault 

 of Mr. Barry's Gothic is that it puts us quite out of conceit with a good 

 many other things, and with Windsor Castle among the rest ; which I 

 must confess falls greatly short of what 1 had been previously led to 

 expect, there being very much in it that is exceedingly questionable 

 as to taste. Not the least remarkable circumstance in Barr\'s edifices 

 is that the inner courts — the quadrangle of the Speaker's residence, 

 for instance, will be though less elaborate as carefully designed and 

 finished as those parts which are exposed to public view ; whereas 

 the greater part of the exterior of the British Museum presents only a 

 mass of plain brick wall, with naked windows. 1 admit that more at- 

 tention is paid to design in the inm'r court of that edifice, — and won- 

 derfully frigid it is — classically dull and Smirkish throughout. Poor 

 Smirke! ho« greatly he is to be pitied.' — and forthe very reason that 

 many may now envy him, to wit, because he has had so many oppor- 



tunities of manifesting his imbecillity. Barrv — Smirke, they are as far 

 asunder as the two poles ; or I might say the difference between them 

 is that of the trojjical and the frozen regions. As to Barrv, I am afraid 

 that his Houses of I'arliament will sadly discomfort Welbv Pugin, by 

 giving the lie direct to his assertions 



VIII. "One of the Ventilation Folks" has taken too much o« /;je(i 

 de la htire, tlie obviously quizzical remarks in which I indulged in re- 

 gard to the excessive and fusay rout on the subject of ventilation, as 

 if it was a perfectly new discovery, and as if people had been suffo- 

 cating themselves for ages past, rich and poor alike, in palaces as well 

 as in hovels, in the country as well as in towns, and inhaling pestilence 

 at every breath, at least when within doors. Nothing as far as I can 

 discover, did I say in favour of stinking alleys, and frowsy rooms; 

 nor did I express any admiration for the aroma of a drain, though 

 from what the "One" has said it might almost be fancied that I re- 

 commended it as "a cheap and elegant substitute" for altar of roses. 

 My remarks went no furllier than a little banter on the overstrained 

 necessity for far greater attention to ventilation than has hitherto been 

 considered requisite, except for prisons, factories, and other buildings 

 where people are densely pent up together. That the doctrine of the 

 Ventilation Folks is somewhat overstrained can hardly, I think, be 

 denied ; for the plain reason that it proves rather too much, and that 

 a great portion of the population in towns could hardly exist at all; 

 nevertheless exist they do, and that, too, under circumstances which 

 must frequently aggravate a thousandfold the mischiefs arising from 

 insufficient ventilation. 



If ventilation be of such exceeding importance as is insisted upon by 

 its advocates, how terribly — nay fatally must those people blunder who 

 take their daily airing in a carriage with the windows drawn up, and 

 which is then nearly air-tight. Not less blundering is tlie practice of 

 those who make it a point to secure an airy bedchamber, and then 

 closet themselves within curtains drawn so closely around them, that 

 they might as well sleep in a closet of the same dimensions as their 

 bed. If " Ventilation" be quite in the right. Gentility must be con- 

 foundedly in the wrong; since what barbarians those must be who io 

 order to gratify a little trumpery vanity, stow away and squeeze their 

 "five hundred dear friends" together, till they might nearly as well 

 be in the Black Hole at Calcutta! Why do not the Ventilation Folks 

 call upon the legislature to make all such "At Homes " illegal assem- 

 blages, devised for the purpose of smothering her Majesty's loyal and 

 fashionable subjects? I know not whether the Ventilation Folks are 

 particularly musical, but if they are so at all, I presume that their 

 chief and favourite instrument is the iEolian harp; at the same time 

 I suspect that some of them have bo particular dislike to playing the 

 trumpet. 



HINTS ON ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM.— Part 2. 



My last paper confined itself to a statement that architecture pos- 

 sessed the same claims to open criticism as her sister arts ; — my present 

 design is to enforce those claims more strongly. The attempt then 

 was to deprive taste of its precarious nature, and so to shake preju- 

 dice, as to prepare the mind for further illustration in proof of that 

 statement; the present effort consists in reconciling an apparent dis- 

 crepancy between the claims of architecture and the other arts, by dis- 

 plaving the peculiar features in which her poetry is cast, and by 

 showing that though the mind be eflected in a more remote and deli- 

 cate manner, and that though an emotion, or an idea induced by it, be 

 neither so animated, nor so vivid as another art might produce, yet 

 that its eftects are not the less faithful, nor less the result of a principle 

 (whilst tlie principle itself emanates from nature); and hence, that if 

 there be such a principle to guide the architect towards the material 

 of his fancy, then architecture may remodel herself, and criticism may 

 unbend. 



One peculiar distinction of architecture appears to be in its com- 

 pelling us when viewing the composition, to assume a suggestive or 

 comparing attitude, and this necessity is consequent upon there being 

 little that is strictly imitative in its phisiognomy or shape. This 

 power of suggestion varies in degree, in the choice of features, and in 

 the manner of their disposal. "Where tliere is an introduction and 

 classification of natural figures, so as to intrude on the province of the 

 sculptor, the suggestive power of the art is shown in its faintest de- 

 gree, fur the imagination is in that case assisted by the presence of a 

 familiar object, and the senses being palpably impressed, the mind has 

 less effort to arrive at the final conception and emotion. The sugges- 

 tive power in this ease however still belongs to architecture, because 

 it forms a feature in the whole, and because the architect exercises a 

 discretionary power in the adaptation; but the features themselves 

 are not so strictly suggestive as architectural features usually are 



