inquiries after old friends, and visits to such picture galleries as are accessible, my next inquiry is for any thing new in the way of Architecture. And here there is something which I have in vain studied to account for, namely, that while private individuals, or commercial companies, or parochial committees, can generally get a good design for their money, Government, with the collective wealth of the country at its command, appears almost always to fail.

There is, I think, no building in London so universally and justly condemned as the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The unmeaning segments, each consisting of a brace of columns, or of a portion of blank wall, advancing and retreating without any purpose-I think the first time I saw it I counted sixteen such irregularities, and its fenestration manifestly unsuited to its known purpose, all combine to render it a building of which the nation is and ought to be ashamed.

Soon after the long

If not so much in disparagement, still but little in the way of admiration can be said of the Palace in St. James' Park. It is viewed with indifference. front was added, I heard a story of two critics, one of whom was expressing great admiration of the addition, while the other confessed that he could not feel its beauty, and thought it rather commonplace. "Ah! but," said the more favourable critic, "you should not forget how much ugliness it conceals." Now, this no doubt is a merit- but then if the concealment be complete, it is a merit of which few of those who see it will ever think.

But the great architectural work of the day is the House of Parliament—a work of immense size and still more enormous expense. This must be spoken of in a very different tone from the buildings above mentioned. It is the work of a man of genius, and there is in it much

to admire, while to my mind there is something to regret. What I object to in it is, that as a single continuous uniform building it is too large. I have little doubt that in commencing his designs, Sir Charles Barry had in his mind the very beautiful Hôtels de Ville in the principal towns of Belgium; and had he been required to provide a structure of any thing like the same extent as those hotels, he could not have started with a better primary idea. But then it ought, I think, to have occurred to him, and to those who adopted his plans, to consider whether the same degree of height, and the same repetition of the same or similar ornament which was suitable and pleasing in a building of moderate size, might not appear low and tiresome in a building which is more like a town than a town-house. In the interior, however, there is much to admire. The broad flight of steps under the east window of the noble old hall, branching off to the corridors on each side, is grand and palatial. For corridors Sir Charles Barry has a special genius, as might have been inferred from one of his early productions-the Grammar School at Birmingham. Perhaps the least satisfactory parts of the whole are the two chambers themselves. That for the Commons has been spoiled, I believe, for the purpose of improving the transmission of sound; and the House of Lords is more marked by finery of decoration than by grandeur of forms.

As we descend from national edifices to those erected by individuals or societies, we must feel that Architecture has, in some quarters at least, made great advances in the last half century. If we compare Devonshire and Lansdowne houses with the palaces lately built for Lord Ellesmere facing the Green Park, and by Mr. Holford in Park Lane, it is clear, that whatever may be the internal

VOL. V.

B

comfort and splendour of the former, they do not, like the latter, afford a gratifying object of contemplation to the multitude who have not the entrée either to the one or the other. With these aristocratic edifices we may class the more democratic club-houses which almost occupy the south side of Pall-Mall; and whatever faults of detail may be found among them, I doubt whether the whole of the last century produced as much of street façade, which can be contemplated with any thing like satisfaction, as has been produced very recently, and within a few years, in Pall-Mall and St. James' Street.

In estimating these edifices as evidence to the state and prospects of Architecture in Great Britain, it is clear that we must not be hypercritical. There may be little of originality in the designs, and each particular club may have its prototype in some of the palaces of Rome, or Venice, or Genoa. I am not aware that there has been any servile copying, but certainly the general air of Pall-Mall reminds me, not of these Italian models themselves, which I never saw, but of the engravings and photographs of them. And of this I see not the slightest reason to complain; for if an architect provides for his employer a commodious and elegant building, what more has any one a right to demand?

Two of the largest clubs - the Carlton and the Naval and Military-suggested to me some considerations not foreign I hope to the purpose of this address. In the Carlton there is a very striking variety of colour in the materials. The wall-face is of the ordinary building-stone, while the ornamental columns are of red granite. This appears to me a case in which variety of colour is not merely allowable but commendable. There is here a structural discontinuity, a sudden passing of the eye from

one structural form to another, and in such cases there is nothing objectionable, when the change in form is accompanied by a change of colour. The effect is very different, when as in Mr. Hope's new house in Piccadilly, the red granite is introduced in unnecessary and unmeaning patches upon the flat wall. The Military and Naval presents two very extensive and richly ornamented fronts one towards Pall-Mall, and the other towards St. James' Square. In the elevation, we have first a rusticated basement storey rising from the level of the street; then an entresol; and above that a Corinthian colonnade, with a very rich frieze and cornice. But the basement and entresol being all above the level of the spectator, occupy one-half of the whole elevation of the building; and this, I feel assured, is far too large a portion to devote to such purposes. The effect produced is that of one complete edifice placed upon the top of another.

Though I thus conclude my remarks upon the new street architecture of London with an adverse criticism on a particular case, I feel, and all must feel, that art is advancing; and that, looking only to the productions of the Georgian and Victorian ages, the architects and the public of the present day have no reason to be ashamed. And if in this department the appearance of improvement is undeniable, much more have we reason to rejoice at the still more marked advance in ecclesiastical architecture. And in reference to this, the hope for the future rests not more upon the skill and feeling exhibited by our architects, not in London only, but in every province of Great Britain, than upon the attention which is paid to the subject by all classes of the community, and the large amount even of technical knowledge possessed by many who are actively employed, but not absorbed in other professions. It may

be twenty years ago since Mr. Rickman told me he knew a dozen clergymen in England quite competent to produce the working drawings for a first-rate church; and if we may judge from the numerous publications on mouldings, tracery, groining, and such matters, the number and the attainments of such amateur architects must have largely increased since his day. Still it is desirable, that the working drawings should be left to the professional architect; but it must be a satisfaction to him, when he knows, that the result of his studies is to be submitted to employers capable of appreciating them, and who, in any alterations they may propose, have knowledge enough to distinguish between the possible and the impossible, and taste enough to distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly.

In respect, then, to Church Architecture, and speaking from my own impressions, I am disposed to say, not merely that we have advanced beyond the two or three very dark centuries which immediately preceded the present, but that the productions of each year show some advance upon those of the year before. The new churches which are springing up in and about the metropolis are so numerous and varied, that it would be absurd to classify them all under any common description. But this I will venture to say, that there is hardly one of them which is not, upon the whole, a pleasing object-hardly one which would or could have been erected at any period between the reign of Henry VII. and our own time.

I venture very briefly, gentlemen, to direct your attention to two churches, neither completely finished, but both I think well deserving the attention of the architect and the lover of architecture. The one is a church between Gordon and Torrington Squares, built by the Apostolic, or, as it is vulgarly called, the Irvingite Church.