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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[December, 



III. Ill continuation of the remarks on tlie styl? above spoken of, one 

 thing that is not lo be lost sight of is, that justice cannot be done to 

 it, nor its cliaracter kept up even tolerably well, if the proportions be 

 neglected— proportions all the more deserving of notice, because little 

 mention is made of them, and little attention paid to them; namely, 

 the proportion of solid wall to the apertures, both as regnrds breadth 

 of piers between windows, and breadth of horizontal surface between 

 the separate floors and their windows. If sufficient space cannot be 

 allowed for these proportions, very much that is essentia! to character 

 is forfeited, althougli the composition and all its details may be just 

 the same as where the due proportions are observed. All grandeur 

 of manner is lost, and is replaced by a certain littleness and offensive 

 "squeeziness,"— a term, by the bye, that may very well be allowed 

 to pass current, as it is sufficiently expressive ; nor is exception to be 

 taken to it, when the fault itself which it describes is tolerated much 

 more than it ought to be. It is this "squeeziness," among other 

 things, that causes those long slips ycleped Terraces, in tlie Regent's 



Park, to look like so many barracks flashily bedizened out with all 

 sorts of Brummagem architectural tinery— sham pediments, columns, 

 (crammed in between windows;! pilasters, fluted in order to make 

 amends for hole-in-the-wall doors, and here and there a jjamfed sham 

 window— to say nothing of garrets peeping over balustrades, and 

 chevaux-de-frize of chimneys, bristling like so many porcupines on 

 the roofs. Compare Chester or Cumberland Terrace with the Reform 

 Club-house ; the first are all bloated littleness, made up of would-be 

 finery, and without the least refinement. On looking at them, you 

 long to block up every other window, to take away their columns and 

 starved entablatures, and to give them a cornice where a cornice ought 

 to be, above and not below the uppermost windows. 



IV. If a memorial of nothing else, the column in— or rather poked 

 out of— Trafalgar Square, will serve to keep in recollection the extra- 

 ordinary fact, that after two competitions, and from among nearly 

 200 designs, some of them by our chief architects and sculptors, no 

 greater effort of genius could be selected, nothing better worthy of 

 being carried into execution, than the hackneyed common-place idea 

 of a huge column, which any one who can draw can design. It will 

 now stand as a monument either of the utter incompetence of British 

 artists to accomplish anything superior, or of the utter incompetence 

 of the Committee to form any opinion; and of their sulky obstinacy 

 in persisting to adhere to their unfortunate choice, after the extreme 

 dissatisfaction expressed at it, and after they had ac'ually held out . 

 the hope of abandoning it, by allowing a second competition to take 

 place, thereby affording themselves an opportunity for correcting their 

 former mistake. Far more creditable, because far less impudent, 

 would it have been on the part of the committee, to have at once 

 refused all further competition, contenting themselves with disap- 

 pointing our expectations once. If they were determined to stick up 

 a long pole, there was at least no occasion to make of it two baulks. 

 One baulk was quite enough, in all reason; the second might, in de- 

 cency, have been spared us. The only excuse is that they seem to 

 have taken Nelson's own motto for their guidance, but construed it 

 most unluckily, supposing " Palmum qui meruit, &c." to mean " Any- 

 thing may be palmed upon poor John Bull." They may have honoured 

 Nelson, though very equivocally, but they have most unequivocally 

 disgraced themselves by erecting what will be an object of contempt 

 and derision to all persons of taste. 



V. Common as it is, it is a very lame and shuffling excuse when those 

 who profess to give us historical and critical remarks on architecture, 

 break off as sooo as they approach their own period, under the pre- 

 tence of being restrained by " delicacy " from speaking of their con- 

 temporaries. In most cases the real truth would be, that they have 

 no opinions of their own to offer, and can get no ready-made ones out 

 of books, as they can respecting persons and things that have been 

 spoken of repeatedly. A nice man. Swift has told us, is a man of 

 nasty ideas ; and so, in the delicacy of these over-scrupulous writers, 

 there is something the reverse of complimentary. The inference to 

 be drawn from their silence is, that were they to offer any opinions at 

 all, they would be highly prejudicial and offensive ones. They are 



too good natured to censure, and are by far too scrupulous to com- 

 men'd, against their critical conscience. Delicate souls! but then why 

 do they meddle with what requires a firmness of purpose which they 

 do not possess? why do they undertake an office so highly disagree- 

 able to their feelings, and so much at variance with their notions of 

 propriety and discretion? 



VI. I have often observed that those who affect to attach little or 

 no importance to " matters of mere taste," are apt to be excessively 

 sore if you venture to find fault with their own taste. After telling 

 vou that what they have done makes no pretensions to merit of de- 

 sign in any respect, after assuring you that there is nothing to admire 

 in it, such persons will look confoundedly nettled at you if you point 

 out faults that might easily have been avoided. While with mock 

 humilitv they disclaim your admiration, they not only expect you to 

 express it, but are sulky if you do not. While they profess to have 

 built merely to please themselves, they are angry if every one else 

 does not profess to be. equally well pleased also. I well remember one 

 captious individual of the kind, who was so excessively indignant at 

 some comments on the taste shown in the front of his house, which 

 had a large bird-cage-looking viranda on Ionic columns, that he blus- 

 tered most terribly, and talked of bringing his action against the pub- 

 lisher of the periodical wherein they had appeared ! Most uuques- 

 tionablv everv one who builds has a right to please himself— to erect 

 a row of brickbat battlements on the top of a cockney-looking sash- 

 windowed house, and call it a castle; or to commit any other absur- 

 dity. Yet while he in that manner avails himself of the Mium side 

 of the privilege, let him not forget the Timm one, but bear in mind 

 that people are just as much privileged to laugh at him, as he is to 

 make a fool of himself, and have just as much right to ridicule his 

 bad taste as he has to display it. 



VII. Not much dependence is to' be put upon Naglev's "Kiinstler- 

 Lexicon ;" at least not for its notices of English artists. The article 

 on the late Augustus Pugin, is little more than a tissue of blunders 

 from beginning to end. Although he died at the end of 1832, he is 

 spoken of as still living ; and although he was about G3 at that time, 

 he is said to have been born in 17S0, and to have been a native of 

 London! For a long time, we are told, he devoted his attention to 

 the public buildings of the English metropolis, before he began to 

 direct it to the study of Gothic architecture, travelling through his 

 native country for that purpose ! In the year 1839, it seems, he 

 began the Roman Catholic church at Manchester, one of the finest 

 specimens of Gothic in this country ! It is a pity that Nagler did not 

 mention the " Contrasts " as one of his publications ; more especially 

 as he has not scrupled to attribute to him the illustrations in Britton's 

 Cassiobury— or as he spells it, Castuobimj. Nagler, it is to be hoped, 

 does not blunder quite so much by wholesale, in his notices of Con- 

 tinental artists, because he is perpetually quoted as the authority for 

 articles of that kind, in the new "Biographical Dictionary." 



VIII. Whatever the reviewers may say of Mr. Gwilt's new work, 

 they will hardly accuse him of servile adulation to the powers that 

 be! When speaking of palaces— instead of sliding in a graceful 

 compliment to Windsor Castle as being the bright particular gem 

 which redeems this country from the reproacli of having no worthy 

 abode for its sovereign, he damns it with faint praise, uttered in a 

 very sneering tone. Windsor Castle, he gives us to understand, is 

 very far from being a model for a palace, and that its attractions lie 

 more in its site and scenery than in its architecture. He has taken 

 care, however, that posterity shall not learn from him the name of the 

 architect employed upon it, for no where does he mention Sir JeffVy 

 Wyatville, whom he has excluded from his list of architects— as he 

 has, likewise, James Wyatt, although he has given a place in it to 

 some individuals of far less note. Of course the omission must have 

 been intentional, since it is not for a moment to be supposed that 

 either Mr. Gwilt or anv one else at all acquainted with the history of 

 modern English architecture, should not know of, or forget, such per- 

 sons. Surely James Wvatt might have been admitted into the com- 

 pany of Isaac Ware and James Payne, neither of whom were very 

 brilliant luminaries in the art; although the first of them edited Pal- 



