the English have so eminently distinguished themselves, and of which they were almost first to set the example. Of course the less that is now said of the credit and rank they have thus gained among the nations of Europe, the better; since,—that is, in the opinion of those who consider such relapse matter for congratulation-such labours have been even mischievously directed, leading us astray so far that, as we perceive, it is little short of an actual triumph to find our way back again to the very point we had reached a century ago. If we are to believe Mr. Gwilt, there has not been a single felicitous attempt to adapt the architecture of the Greeks to modern purposes; which, as their attempts have been numerous enough, is not highly complimentary to the profession, although he would have us believe he does not, on that account, call their talent in question; but he is quite angry with us and others like us, who think that English architects might profit by studying the taste and skill with which some of their German contemporaries have appropriated to their purpose the forms and style of Greece. Except, indeed, it be that they are new intruders into the field, we do not see why the Germans, merely as foreigners, should be regarded with greater jealousy than either the French or Italians, nor wherefore we should be chargeable with want of patriotism in praising the former, more than Mr. Gwilt is for extolling the two last. Provided the art itself be but a gainer, what matters it from what quarter improvement comes to us, or where it originates? Yet it is we, forsooth, who are illiberal.

Happily such absurd jealousy and narrow-mindedness do not seem to belong to the juniors in the profession, as the following extract from a paper read at the Architectural Society will plainly testify.

"The study of the works of Schinkel impress the mind at once with the feeling that they are the offspring of genius, which is not confined to one branch of art; that they have been conceived under the conviction that the poet, the painter, and the sculptor, must be united in the architect who aspires to be something beyond a mere builder. The words remind me of a remark of the professor of anatomy, in his late elegant introductory lecture at the Royal Academy, when expatiating on the varied attainments necessary to constitute pre-eminence in works which demand creative imagination and genius: We frequently hear talk,' said he, ' of a mere mathematician, of a mere engineer, of a mere anatomist; but a mere poet, a mere historical painter, a mere sculptor, are words without meaning, or mean only, no poet, no painter, no sculptor at all.' A mere architect is, I am sure, quite as much a contradiction in terms, and might have been added to the list with at least equal justice.”

The writer then proceeds to notice one or two of Schinkel's pncipal works, where, unless he has been so far misled by our

estimate of them as to adopt our opinions too implicitly, what he says may serve to confirm them: and at least convince Mr. Gwilt, that a reviewer, one "evidently unacquainted with the first principles of architecture," is not the only person captivated by the "meagre display" of the colonnade of the Berlin Museum; which he affirms to be more like the composition of a scenepainter than of an architect. Such being his opinion, it is to be presumed that he considers it at any rate scenic; and yet he talks of "its want of variety, and of light and shade consequent,' which "renders the mass uninteresting; it has no feature, all is sameness!"

For our description of this uninteresting piece of sameness, we must refer to the paper in our 27th Number; which description, if it is at all intelligible, and that it is so we may presume from Mr. Gwilt's having made use of it himself,-will show in how eminent a degree it possesses those very qualities denied to it by him, who must surely all the while have been looking at the vile and paltry little wood-cut that he has given of it. We admit that it is deficient in that kind of variety which pervades most of the designs of the Italian school. There is no crowding together of all kinds of features, no confusion, no flutter. There is an ample colonnade backed in the centre by an inner one,* consequently great variety not only of light and shade, but also as regards perspective effect-infinitely more so than in the usual Palladian style, where columns are engaged or attached to a wall, “to which they are generally more an incumbrance than an ornament”—at least so it is affirmed by no less authority than Mr. Gwilt himself! If a mere colonnade, let its background and accompaniments be what they may, is poor, and meagre, and unvaried, wherefore do we affect to admire Grecian architecture at all, unless it be that since the buildings themselves, are more or less imperfect, the fallacious picturesqueness of their actual appearance conceals the original meagreness, monotony, and want of interest in the design? Perhaps it would have been as well for the decrier of Schinkel to have confined himself to general remark, for, in venturing upon particular objections, he makes sad work, and unintentionally

*

According to Mr. Gwilt, there is only a single one, though his own cut of the plan on the opposite page proves the contrary! And here, too, he talks of the columns and ceiling producing shadow on the wall, while he tells us there is a want of light and shade!! We may as well take this opportunity of showing also his candour, in calling our description of Moller's Church at Darmstadt a eulogy, when, in fact, so far from bestowing exaggerated praise on it, we spoke of it as having unfinished appearance.' a very unsatisfactory and So much for eulogy! Another remark may be added, namely that, admitting for a moment we actually merit, in regard to our opinions, all that Mr. Gwilt has advanced against us, we surely deserve some praise for the descriptions we gave of buildings then not made known by any previous account of them.

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deals out two or three blows that rebound on his own favourites. He complains that the crowning member is frittered away by the row of eagles, although they are not much larger than antefixæ, and barely serve to break the straight line, which just before he seems to consider monotonous. Surely one of these two contradictory and neutralizing faults might have been omitted; for if there be monotony, there cannot be much fritter. But if such comparatively small features cut up the outline, and destroy repose, how can we at all tolerate the balustrades with statues, vases, pyramids, and other fantastical ornaments, hoisted upon them, which are of perpetual occurrence in the Italian style? Again, he considers the staircase to be," according to all notions of propriety in art, a defect of the first order;" inasmuch as it destroys the unity of the composition, and shows the building to consist of two stories. This exceedingly hypercritical objection, started merely for the sake of picking out something like a specific fault, is not even tenable, because, bad as the cuts in the book are, they show at once that neither the staircase, the landing, nor the door leading from it into the gallery of the rotunda, can be seen over the screen, behind the second row of columns; and if it were as an ascent to such gallery, how could it possibly interfere with the unity of the composition? To insist that an order should invariably denote a corresponding division of the building withinside would be fatal to Italian architecture, where there are sometimes two or more stories included in one order; or else, as is the case with many churches, there are two external orders, with no upper floor within. This façade is, it seems, a mask; yet if it be, it is not singular in that respect, most Italian buildings deserving the term in a far greater degree. Again, the victories in the frieze of the Wacht-gebäude are carped at as no better than solecisms, being substituted for the usual triglyphs. Yet for such deviation from general practice, adequate analogous precedent may be found in the monument of Thrasyllus, where wreaths take the place of triglyphs. At all events, the fault is not greater than that of leaving a Doric frieze quite plain; or than that of giving a pulvinated one to the Ionic order; a favourite practice with the Palladian school, though it is totally at variance with meaning and due expression.

In speaking of the Glyptothek, the author of the Elements shows himself equally fastidious and hypercritical; for he is shocked by the impropriety of antefixæ being introduced as mere ornaments, where they cannot possibly indicate the extremities of tiles. Now although we did not censure, neither did we express any approbation of such an application of them, yet if it be unwarrantable to wrest from their original intention forms so purely

ornamental, and employ them as mere decorations, it becomes a task for the old defenders of the Italian system to show that there propriety is never violated; that it never has recourse to pediments, or columns, or balustrades, but where if not absolutely dictated by necessity, they at least do not appear positively extraneous and superfluous. The other special defect in the Glyptothek is, that there is not a perfect accordance between the exterior and the interior, the former being Grecian, the apartments themselves vaulted, and so far Roman. Well, let the same test be established à la rigueur, and fairly applied without distinction, and many other buildings besides the Glyptothek will be found equally or still more deficient. Are the interiors of the Florentine palaces in perfect accordance with their external aspect?Does the portico of St. Martin's Church prepare us for the style adopted within? Is Cockerell's Chapel in Regent Street, "compared with which there is not a building either by Klenze or Schinkel worth notice, either for design or execution," perfectly unexceptionable, when, with a portico composed from the order of the Minerva Polias at Priene, it exhibits, even externally, a skylight dome of rather insignificant character? We leave it to our readers to answer these questions.

Although we have not touched upon one half of the passages and points we had noted for comment,-among the rest, the contradictory character given of Nash, the curious remarks on Schinkel's Gothic, and the comfortable doctrine that taste in decoration is an EASY AFFAIR!-being apprehensive that we may even now have exceeded the bounds allotted us, we must hasten to conclude, remarking that, in departing so widely in this instanceone likely never to occur again-from the plan and conduct of this periodical, we have been constrained to it by the choice between two alternatives. The one was, to take no notice of a publication which, as an English one, did not properly come under our cognizance; the other was, to waive regard to forms, take it up boldly, and meet a direct attack by a direct reply. Had the same remarks been given to the world in a less assuming form, we should probably have adopted the former course; but, being published in a volume with so imposing a title, and therefore likely to find its way into many libraries, where, unless met by some kind of reply, it would stand as a record of our presumption in advancing opinions we were afterwards either unable to maintain, or too pusillanimous to defend,-we have adopted the latter, as the one that will certainly be expected of us by our readers, who, were we to keep silence, could not interpret it but as an acknowledgment of defeat. Having determined to speak, we could not possibly refrain from dwelling upon the "Elements"

as we have done, because to have noticed it less at length might have been construed as evasive, and imputed to us as a desire merely to save appearances, and to escape from our antagonist as speedily as we could. Had he merely directed a bolt or two against us en passant, or against others as well as ourselves, we might have been contented with replying summarily, and to no more than immediately concerned ourselves; but affecting us exclusively and so nearly, and moreover involving so many opinions upon which we are directly opposed to him, we could not do less than refer to them continually. It is true that we have left ourselves no room for more general matter, or to bestow that notice on the other work at the head of this paper, which we should have been glad to have done under different cir

cumstances.

In regard therefore to the work of Mauch, we can only say that it forms a most excellent and useful supplement to Normand's Parallèle, for which purpose it is intended; and that, while the plates are executed with equal care and taste with those in that work, the text which accompanies them is much more copious and instructive. Whatever may be the case in this country, there seems no disposition in Germany to desert the cause of good taste, by abandoning the Grecian orders and the elements of detail and composition deducible from them, in order to revert to Italian architecture; which latter could hardly have become what it did, had those who established it been acquainted with the same models as ourselves. Hardly can we bring ourselves to believe that Palladio, "with his eye constantly turned to the practice and the details of the ancients," would not have at least incorporated much of Grecian with Roman architecture, if he had had the opportunity of studying the former, as well as the latter. This is what we are now at liberty to do; and not to do it would be foolishly sacrificing to mere prejudice, and to a regard for names, a privilege which, we ought to rejoice in knowing, has been reserved for the present age.