highly ornamental banks, and warehouse buildings, is melancholy show of ignorance and waste.

a

Within the distance between perfect art and perfect artifice, there are, however, several degrees of merit and demerit among architects of various schools, who are employed to give to churches that self-conscious air, of ornament or of asceticism, which is thought to be impressive. Artisans are never, now, employed by Churchmen to 'devyse' their buildings; though to working men the Church owes all its architectural distinction. Certainly, the clergy ought, in their own sphere, to see that working people are not mulcted of that special charm in work that gives its chief poetic zest to honest industry. The public have no wish to undervalue or depreciate the working class; they would be happy to promote and hail their social and artistic resurrection. But they have so often heard of the ages of art' that they take art to be a transient wonder, that at certain periods and in special places visited the earth, and can be only imitated now; quite failing to discern that art potentially is always with us, and that artisans, when working with delight and freedom, will, with experience, undoubtedly develop art.

For some two centuries, while the present architectural method has endured, the several handsome edifices built in London have had but a dilettante and traditional repute. The public do not understand them; they admire them, as they are instructed to admire, without due comprehension. These elaborate buildings are supposed to be artistic, since they are designed in some reputed architectural style'; and, though they are entirely distinct from art, yet in their own inferior way there are, as with the architects, degrees of quality and worth among them. They are sometimes clever and superbly graceful compositions, in which a consummate sense of form and outline is associated with a scholarly acquaintance, and a masterly facility with classic orders; but more frequently, and almost universally at present, they are but a coarse display of wealth, with small intelligence, and with no claim on sympathy.

The ruling motive of these buildings is symmetric repetition, without progress or variety; the object, it appears, is rather to conceal their special character and application than to display and emphasize them. Every front is to engage the entire scope of vision with some balanced form, and to subordinate all multiplicity of need and occupation to a duplex and reflected outline. The great multitude, it seems, admire such lifeless composition; and it is accepted as a showy substitute for art.

Admitting this, there are in London many works of pseudo

architecture

architecture that do credit to their several composers. Somerset House has one peculiar element that later buildings lack; it looks as if designed expressly for the satisfaction of the draughtsman who compiled it; it has no appearance of the slightest care to gratify a mob, or a committee. The composer had selfconfidence; and popularity and prettiness were not to be the gauge of his successful work. He evidently did his best to please himself; and so his building has the dignity that comes of singleness of purpose. Still, the work is harsh and cheerless, fitter for a prison than for comfortable use. It is without amenity, except perhaps in portions of the Strand and river

fronts; and it suggests mere quarrying and mechanics, in a way quite inconsistent with imaginative charm, and grateful human effort. Thus these chilling elevations need a covering of perennial climbing plants, with flowers on the window-sills; associated objects tending to enjoyment and delight. The courtyard is a stony desert. Were it made a lawn and flower garden, what a pleasure it might be to daily passengers along the Strand!

When, many years ago, King's College was about to be erected in immediate contact with Sir William Chambers's scholarly Italian work, Sir Robert Peel gave, in the House

of

of Commons, a distinct assurance that the newer elevations should be made in architectural accordance with the adjoining building. Notwithstanding this authoritative pledge, the founders of King's College made their buildings a travesty of Grecian architecture, wholly inconsistent with the adjacent work. Their actual successors are, it seems, advancing on this old transgression; and the addition facing the Embankment is an eyesore on our public building. This most offensive structure of stock brickwork is an illustration of our architectural art. We are pretending, or supposed, to have a taste, and we continually study culture.' This is our way; we study only, and we do not practise what we know. King's College has an architectural Professor of its own; and here we have the obvious result. The architectural culture at our colleges is mere pretence, a thing to talk about, and not to live by; and the genuine demonstration of it all is the Embankment elevation of King's College. Here, however, there has been no lack of high professional protection; all the work has been designed by Fellows of the Royal Institute

of British Architects.

Still more recently than the Italian dialect, a copy of Greek architectural details became the fashion. This scholastic imitation of a mode of building suited to a climate utterly unlike our own, was most unfortunate; it constantly resulted in some solecism or absurdity. For instance, an observant visitor to the British Museum, when approaching the huge colonnade, must feel that it has no appropriate foundation. Such large columns would in a Grecian temple have proportionately solid footings: steps massive and deep, that in appearance, as in fact, might properly support such ponderous structures. But in our drawing masters' imitation these high steps are wanting; and instead there are thin slabs of stone, made to appear still thinner by projecting mouldings, introduced to suit pedestrian, not artistic needs; an imitation of thin woodwork done in stone. An architectural support cannot be made proportionate at once to such enormous cylinders and to the human foot; and in our medieval English art the entrance steps are made distinct from the base moulding of the building; since the former are for the ascent of mobile men, the latter for the obvious architectural foundation of a monumental edifice.

* Sir Robert Smirke could work with either hand. When the right hand became fatigued, he used the left. But then he used a pencil, not a chisel, for his work. His ideas were limited and few, and his architectural details were continually repeated. If a mould were wanted at the Post Office, it could be obtained at the Custom House, and vice versa. Something like a score of imitative Greek details sufficed for Smirke's designs throughout the country.

Such

Such Grecian colonnades are wholly out of place in London; and, still further north, these forms, depending for their due effect on bright habitual sunshine, are particularly inconsistent. The constructions on the Mound at Edinburgh are not real, unsophisticated architecture, they are bastard sciolism done in stone. Art is entirely wanting; there is nothing but a fashionable work of imitation, done to gain the tutored admiration of that class of people who are wholly ignorant of the art thus travestied, but who are more admiring, possibly, because of their defective knowledge.

After Greek purism there came another period of imitative renaissance Italian architecture, just coeval with a copying, mechanical pretence of medieval art. According to the former method, various palaces at Florence, Rome, and Venice were, with modulations, reproduced in several buildings in the west of London, and elsewhere throughout the country; and they made a show. The earliest imitations were decidedly the best, because they were the closest copies; and the Farnese and Pandolfini palaces were smoothly reproduced in small, to suit our size of rooms and buildings. The fenestral method, and the arcaded forms of Venice, were adopted as the fashion; and they have been vulgarized by 'botchers' throughout England, until further degradation seems to be impossible. Yet never has the Royal Institute of British Architects denounced this infinite corruption. Its own members are indeed the chief promoters of the mischief, which they studiously 'design.'

as a

Again, though in the so-called medieval architectural revival nothing was revived, all things available were imitated. It was amusing to observe how, as each old building was discovered by the illustrators, it was promptly seized to serve 'design' by some accomplished imitator; how again, when almost every ancient English work of art had been thus' curiously appropriated, an imitative mixture of Venetian Gothic with our Early English forms supplied a new material for the manufacture of designs. This architectural hybrid was quite barren of artistic worth. The Museum building, near the Parks at Oxford, showed its impotence; and in the Hyde Park shrine, we have a most elaborate exhibition of its failure as a means of art.

Contemporary with the medieval, false Renaissance was and is the deadly architectural plague of restoration;' by which, under the pretence of vivifying it, whenever an old building was instinct with the vitality and the poetic power of the old artisans, it was, generally by some member of the Royal Institute, and with much obtrusive care, destroyed. In London there have

been,

and

been, unfortunately, few old buildings extant to be ruined and defaced. At Westminster the restoration of the northern transept of the Abbey is a vain attempt; no one would take it for a work of art. The thing is too precise and overdone; petty pretty; there is none of the creative boldness of the old masons. The restorer's details might have been designed for ivory work, they are so small, and fine, and unimpressive; and, compared with the adjacent pinnacles, they look absurd. As to the interior, that is suffering obscuration from the new and wholly inappropriate stained glass in the windows; till at length the place will be a huge kaleidoscope, and will become invisible by day without the aid of electricity or gas.

Our recent meddlers and restorers, although members of the Royal Institute of British Architects, appear incapable of understanding the acute and varied genius of the medieval artisans ; and so they seek to give a much admired completeness to the old masons' seemingly unfinished work. Their neat ideas are similar to those of topiarian gardeners a century or two ago, who clipped the yew trees to their notion of what well conducted trees should be, and gave uncultivated nature symmetry and form. Thus our restoring British Architects, and the custodians of ancient buildings, failing to perceive the difference between achievement and completeness, do not see that incompleteness often is the essence of artistic work. Without the art the work might be completed; but in art there will be reticence. The expression being adequately given and the effect obtained, the artist holds his hand; to advance again towards completeness would be pleonastic, and would actually detract from the artistic power and feeling of the work, which should be left with human sentiment and imperfection stamped upon it, giving monumental life. The working builders of the choir at Westminster inserted coloured glass where it was needed for their architectural object; and, that their fine building might be fairly visible, they, limiting the colour, left the glazing, to so many modern eyes, imperfect. Members of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who draw in offices, and traffic in designs, apparently have no idea of the old workman's thoroughly artistic care as he wrought on the buildings, and could thus continually observe the architectural development and needs of his expressive work.

All architecture is but the combined result of workmanship and light. The workman builds, and moulds, and carves, in trust that sunbeams will, of course, illuminate his work. Every projection, buttress, column, arch, and cornice, is designed to catch or intercept the light; and only by the

contrast