in Paul-street, Finsbury. The houses are neat and even cheerfullooking externally; and inside the most careful provision has been made for home and family comfort. Each block has a recessed centre, with balconies to each floor, and a staircase common to all. The floors are divided into groups of rooms, each complete in itself, strictly separated, and adapted to larger or smaller families. Mr. Waterlow calculates on a clear profit of 6 or 8 per cent. The apartments let as soon as ready, and the scheme altogether appears to have been so successful that a number of gentlemen have formed themselves into a company to erect several similar buildings at King's Cross and elsewhere. It is estimated that for 25,000l. buildings like those of Mr. Waterlow may be erected to accommodate 200 families. They are to be divided into-dwellings of 3 rooms to be let at 7s. 6d. and 6s. 6d. a week, and of 2 rooms at 5s. 6d. But though these would meet the wants of many of the working-people dispossessed of homes by railway progress, &c., and be well adapted to newly-married couples, it is manifest that they are above the reach of the very poor. Indeed, to build these very dwellings, Mr. Waterlow had to pull down half a street of wretched hovels, of whose inhabitants probably not one would dream of being able to rent an apartment in the handsome pile for which they had to give way.

In

It is this lower stratum of society—though still not the lowest— which Mr. Peabody's munificent gift will probably help. The first practical employment of a portion of the Peabody Fund has been in the erection of an immense pile of buildings at the junction of White Lion-street with Commercial-street, Spitalfields. The building, which has a frontage of 215 feet to the latter street, and 140 feet to the former, is of a kind of domestic Gothic, with stepped gables, &c., imposing from its mass, loftiness, and substantial character; but showing that there has been no unnecessary expenditure on merely decorative features. The basement, ground, and first floor of the Commercial-street wing are appropriated to shops, with their stores and dwellings, which will thus supply a valuable source of revenue. White Lion-street there will be a co-operative store. On the second and third floors are the dwellings for the poor, which consist of 3 of one room, 47 of two, and 7 of three rooms, placed on each side of a wide corridor. Dust-shafts pass from the roof to the basement, where are large dustbins accessible from the yard. The living-rooms average 13 feet by 10, the bed-rooms 13 feet by 8, and all are 8 feet high. They are supplied with large cupboards, cooking range, boiler, oven, hot-plate, &c. Lavatories are provided on each floor; and the fourth, or topmost floor, is appropriated to laundries, baths, and areas to serve for drying clothes, and as a play-place for children in wet weather. The rents, varying according to the amount of accommodation, are to be "fixed at so low a rate that the poorest of the industrial classes-i. e., those whose wages range from 12s. to 22s. a week-may be able to pay them" without subletting, which will on no account be allowed. We fear it is a miscalculation which supposes that "the poorest of the industrial classes can pay a rent estimated on average earnings such as these. A very large number who, having no settled employment, find occupation by the day as unskilled la

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bourers would make up a much lower average of earnings at the year's end. It is an admirable undertaking as far as it goes: it is the duty of the philanthropist to inquire whether it descends low enough. The building is from the designs of Mr. Darbyshire, the architect of Miss Burdett Coutts's Dwellings for the Poor at Bethnal Green.

Not far from the Peabody Dwellings, in the same street, is another building on a smaller scale that merits a passing note. It is a neat structure, built at a cost of about 6,000l., from the designs of Mr. H. H. Collins, for the "Jewish and East London Model Lodging Houses Association." This also has shops on the ground floor and conveniently arranged dwellings above.

Other efforts are being made in London, and in some of the provincial towns, to improve the dwellings of the poor; but it must suffice to make this general mention of them. It hardly belongs to a paper on Public Improvements to speak of what is being done to get rid of the scandal attaching to the state, both as to number and kind, of the cottages of the rural population. Yet this subject is so important that we should have been tempted to enter upon it had we not already far exceeded the space allotted to this section. As it is, we can only add that zealous and generally well-directed efforts are making both by societies and the owners of property to amend what is amiss; and we may hope that attention having been so strongly directed to the evil, it will not be long before it is greatly mitigated.

An experiment, belonging partly to the town, partly to the country, must however be mentioned. It is that of Mr. Edward Akroyd, of Halifax, the donor of the magnificent church at Haley Hill (engraved in the Companion to the Almanac' for 1862, p. 258), and whose good works in that town have been so numerous. Mr. Akroyd has built a complete village, named from him Akroydon, of substantial and even handsome houses, of a bold and simple Gothic, differing considerably in size and costliness, but all admirably arranged for comfort and convenience, and adapted to the several grades of persons employed in his mills, or others in the neighbourhood. By a modification of the principle of the Building Societies, the houses become in a few years, by an easy weekly payment in the shape of rent, the property of the occupants. We commend the scheme to the consideration of those who in like circumstances are anxious to confer a permanent benefit on their dependents, or less affluent neighbours.

3. CHURCHES AND CHAPELS.

Church building is carried on with, if possible, more zeal and vigour than ever; and, as the lists which follow will show, elaborate finish and costly decoration are becoming more and more a matter of course. Of the style there is little to remark beyond what was said at the commencement of the paper. The churches are all Gothic; but in most instances details, in some the general forms, or leading features, are more or less of a foreign type. Irregularity of outline seems to be now the guiding principle in designing a church: symmetry and simplicity the abiding terror of the church architect. To avoid these, he will snip up the outside of his church into as many odd peaks

and projections, and decorate it with as many "bands" and lines and dubious ornaments, as though he were a Nuremberg toy-maker. More thought is, however, undoubtedly being given to the actual use of the building. The nave is treated more as an auditorium; and piers of extravagant thickness are seldom employed. The chancel, again, is made more emphatically a sacrarium, a holy place, to be trodden only by ecclesiastics. Whether this be strictly in conformity with the principles of the English church it is not our business to inquire. It is held by ecclesiologists and the clergy to be in conformity with the ritual; and architects are carrying out the idea to the best of their ability.

The employment of coloured marbles and surface ornament, of what is termed Polychromatic decoration, is very general. It is introduced freely in the chancel, more sparingly in the body of the church. In descriptions published after a consecration we now commonly read glowing accounts of "the richness, brilliancy, and beauty" of the colouring; but to accept these phrases literally we must revert to mediæval practice and notions, and divest the mind of whatever may have been learned by a consideration of the architectonic polychromy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, or by the study of those later masters of painting and decorative art whom of old we were accustomed to designate the great colourists of Italy.

Of London churches opened during the year, that of St. Alban, Baldwin's Gardens, Gray's Inn-lane, is the most important. General notices of it having been given in the volumes for 1861-63, we here merely record its completion. To discuss its merits and demerits would require a consideration of principles involved in the design for which we have now neither space nor inclination. It will suffice, therefore, to say that whilst the exterior is unnecessarily ugly, though an excellent specimen of brickwork, the interior is spacious, lofty, and well-lighted. The body of the church is large in style, forms an admirable auditory, and, without being solemn or impressive, has a noble effect. The chancel, with its quaint shapes and many colours, its alabaster and marbles, its crosses and symbols, and its ten waterglass pictures of the Suffrages of the Litany on the east wall, is a work of great care and cost, but, to our thinking, artistically very unsatisfactory; and the pictures-not being intentionally irreverentare (except to mediævalists) almost ludicrous. In all, the church is 120 feet long, 50 wide, and 95 high,-higher in fact than the nave is long, and hence making that look disproportionately short. It affords 800 sittings, which, as an inscription on the exterior states, are to be for ever free and unappropriated. With the endowment, the church has cost the munificent donor, Mr. J. Hubbard, M.P., 35,000l.: the site was given by Lord Leigh. Mr. Butterfield was the architect.

As an example of the current phase of church architecture we give an engraving of St. Mark's, Notting Dale, just completed. The woodcut (No. 1.) explains sufficiently the general form and character of the exterior. It is marked throughout by studied irregularity. Every part that can be is made to differ from its corresponding part. The transepts are lower than the nave, and the windows on the south differ in form from those on the north. The tall spire is of slate; the

brooch spire of stone. The church is built of ordinary yellow stock bricks with black bands; the arches are of bluish-black and white bricks. The ugly angular flying buttresses are of the like magpie polychromy. The walls of the interior are also of many-coloured bricks. The nave arches and clerestory are borne on cast-iron columns with wroughtiron capitals. A gallery is carried round three sides of the church. In all there are 1,500 sittings. The cost is under 6,500l. The architect is Mr. E. B. Keeling.

At a little distance east of St. Mark's is the newly-completed church of St. Luke the Evangelist, Westbourne Park. The exterior is of white brick, with Bath stone dressings; the walls of the interior are of coloured bricks. The church is of the kind, coming into favour with a section of architects and clergymen, which has only one aisle, and that almost as wide as the nave. The front consists of two gables of very diverse character, though both late First Pointed in style. There is no tower yet: when erected it will be at the back (or chancel end) of the church. The interior is divided into the nearly equal nave and aisle by light arches borne on sandstone columns, and the windows on either hand are of quite different designs: from the chancel end the effect is more peculiar than pleasing. There is much in the church that is admirable; but, as in St. Mark's there is a striving throughout after irregularity, at the expense of many of the higher qualities of ecclesiastical architecture. The architects were Messrs. Francis.

St. Thomas, Wrotham-road, Camden Town, is of dirty yellow brick, with red bands externally, and internally of white brick with yellow bands. The general appearance is picturesque but foreign. It has a well-proportioned tower, square below, cctagonal above, with a spire roof. The interior is wide, lofty, and light, and there are no columns to impede the sight and hearing. The semicircular apse, the great dividing arch, and smaller arches on each side, are so grouped as to produce a piquant and pleasing effect. But the building has several eccentricities, and among them is that of the general arrangement. It stands east and west at the point where two roads divide; and the main current of approach to it is from the west, where, as would seem, the entrance should have been put as a matter of course. But for some inexplicable reason, the apsidal chancel stands at the west end, and the entrance is by two little insufficient doorways, one near the south-east end, the other in the north transept.

Among other churches recently completed in the vicinity of London may be mentioned the following:-St. John the Baptist, East Ham, a plain, solid, cruciform structure, with a central tower borne on four massive columns. The exterior is faced with Kentish rag, with Bath stone dressings. Its style is late First Pointed, with some foreign features. It has 480 sittings, and cost about 3,000. The architect was Mr. A. Blomfield. By the same architect, a picturesque church has been built at East Sheen, near Richmond, Surrey. It consists of a nave and aisle of four bays, with gables, but a second aisle is contemplated hereafter. The interior has a good deal of decorative work, and the shafts are of marble, slate, and stone. The exterior is faced with Bargate stone, with Bath stone dressings. A striking feature