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144

HOLLAND-SMIRKE-WILKINS.

[1784-1820. existed, or any peculiarity of arrangement was required, he was usually ready with some quaint or graceful contrivance that would meet or conceal the difficulty. But a sort of scenic ingenuity is the highest merit his works possess. They have portions of much beauty, but as a whole are mean, if not insignificant. The exterior of a building of so important a character, and covering so vast a space as the Bank of England, might have been expected to form a grand and imposing mass: in reality it is little more than a long, low, unmeaning, decorated wall-screen. Few of Soane's buildings remain unaltered. The front of the Treasury, Whitehall, has been entirely remodelled by Sir Charles Barry. The Courts of Law, Westminster, remain nearly untouched; but they will probably soon be swept away altogether. The Bourgeois Gallery and Mausoleum at Dulwich, and his own house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, are perhaps the chief of Soane's buildings which remain as he left them, but, like the Law Courts, they are inconvenient, cramped, and unsatisfactory.

Holland, who, as architect to the Prince of Wales, remodelled Carlton House, and added the Ionic portico and screen, was one of the first to employ the true Ionic order, if he was not, as some have fancied, the first to introduce it. He enjoyed a large measure of celebrity in his day, but little is left of his more important buildings. Old Drury, opened in 1794, was destroyed by fire in 1809. Carlton House was pulled down in 1826. The Brighton Pavilion was orientalised by Nash. The East India House (designed by him in 1799, but often erroneously ascribed to Jupp, the company's surveyor) is about to be demolished. The loss of these is, however, of little consequence, except as being that of a link in the history of English architecture.

Sir Robert Smirke was the first to erect a Doric portico in the metropolis. This formed the grand entrance to Covent Garden Theatre, built by him in 1808-9. Smirke had travelled in Greece as well as Italy, and published professional comments on the edifices he examined. His Doric portico was announced as the first absolutely correct reproduction of a pure Greek order. It satisfied classical connoisseurs, and the architect at a bound became famous. He did not indeed attempt to carry "pure Greek" principles beyond the portico, but he placed on the façade statues and bas-reliefs by Flaxman, which served to indicate the purpose of the building, a purpose the building itself would scarcely have suggested. The theatre was destroyed by fire in 1856. The chief architectural feature of the long front of the Mint, erected by Smirke in 1811, is a pediment supported on Doric columns, but these rest on a rusticated basement, and there is little else in the building that is Greek either in form or spirit. Smirke erected many other public and private edifices, but his two greatest works, the Post Office, and the British Museum, belong to a later period.

Another of the travelled architects of the classic Greek epoch was Wilkins, who died professor of architecture to the Royal Academy in 1839. Like Smirke, he first came into notice by his descriptions of ancient Greek remains, the result of a professional visit to Athens. His first important building of a public character was Downing College, Cambridge, commenced in 1807, which as far as completed proved to be beyond comparison the dullest, heaviest, and most common-place collegiate building in the two universities. But it was called Greek, and it was considered to be classic; and when the

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NASH-REGENT-STREET.

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East India Company soon after determined on erecting a college, Wilkins was appointed its architect. Haileybury College is almost a duplicate of Downing College. Wilkins also attempted gothic. His first large building. in this style, Donington Castle, Leicestershire, erected about the close of the 18th century, hardly rose in any respect above the level of Batty Langley gothic. When called on to execute some gothic buildings at Cambridge, the proximity of King's College Chapel gave a little more elevation to his style. But he still thought it an evidence of refinement to cover the open oak roof of a college-hall with white paint. He will probably be longest remembered by the National Gallery and University College, but these were not commenced till after the time with which we are at present concerned. The Nelson Columns which he erected at Yarmouth and in Sackville-street, Dublin, only deserve mention as illustrations of the taste of the time and of the architect.

Nash, one of the most conspicuous of the architects of the latter portion of this period, commenced his career as a builder as well as an architect. He erected a large number of mansions in England and Ireland, the major part of them "classic" in style with the inevitable Ionic portico; others "castellated," in which strong battlemented keeps and machicolated towers are intermingled with large plate-glass windows and undefended doorways in a manner that would have very much surprised the fierce feudal lords, whose grim abodes these were supposed to reproduce. Nash was the favourite architect of the Prince Regent; but his grand architectural effort, Buckingham Palace was not commenced till 1825. We have here, therefore, to speak

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of him in connection mainly with the formation of Regent-street, which, whatever may be the character of its architecture, must be regarded as a grand improvement on previous London streets, and as having greatly stimulated improvement in our street architecture. Regent-street was begun in 1813.

VOL. VIII.

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REGENT'S PARK-CHURCHES.

[1784-1820. In laying out its course Nash aimed to produce the greatest amount of effect. He combined several houses together so as to produce the appearance of a single large building; and he varied the design of almost every block. He made the new street of greater width than any former street in the metropolis, and where it crossed the two great thoroughfares of Oxford-street and Piccadilly he formed widely-sweeping circuses. At the southern end he provided a long colonnade. At the northern end where the broad street curves sharply round he carried forward a church entrance, crowning a circular porch-tower with a lofty spire, so as to produce a striking termination to the vista. In the same way the position of each of the churches and public buildings in the new street was laid down with a view to scenic display. But this was the object throughout. Unluckily, in his eagerness for show, stone fronts being impracticable on account of the expense,-he made all the fronts of his stately "street of palaces" of plaster, and what seemed elaborate carving was mere moulded stucco. It was not left for a succeeding generation to denounce this as "sham." Wits and critics alike launched their weapons against the architect, some of them glancing off against his royal patron.* Nash about the same time laid out Regent's Park, and designed the Terraces which border its pleasant glades. It was in this kind of work he was most at home. He was a poor architect, but he has given us the finest street we yet have in London, and one of the pleasantest parks. The Regent's Canal, another of Nash's projects, was carried out simultaneously with Regent's Park, to the beauty of the northern side of which he made it materially to contribute.

It has already been said that scarce any churches were erected during the period before us. There were indeed several of the "proprietary chapels," then the popular class of new churches, but they were usually plain brick buildings of the cheapest description. Towards the end of the period there came about a change. Marylebone Church, commenced in 1813 by the elder Hardwick, was a substantial and costly edifice; and is a fair specimen of the architecture of the time. A still more costly structure St. Pancras Church, already referred to, was commenced in 1819. It was designed by the Inwoods, and is remarkable as the most elaborate attempt made in this country to apply (not to adapt) pure Greek forms to a Protestant church. Marylebone Church cost about 60,000l.; St. Pancras very nearly 80,000l. It is worthy of note that in the forty years ending with 1820 scarcely a gothic church had been erected, whilst during the next forty years the land was covered with them. But the movement which led to the astonishing revival of church building had already commenced. In March, 1818, parliament voted a million for the erection of new churches; and a Commission was appointed to direct the expenditure of the money. The result of the labours of the Commission soon became evident. The Gothic revival was some years longer in making itself felt.

*One of the best of the many witticisms circulated at the time, was an epigram in which it was proposed to visit on the prince the evil deeds of his architect :

Augustus at Rome was for building renown'd,

For of marble he left what of brick he had found:
But is not our George, too, a very great master?
He finds London brick, and he leaves it all plaster."

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BRIDGES-TELFORD.

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It is needless to carry farther our examination of the architecture of this period; but there is one class of structures, Bridges, which must be noticed, because about this time they passed definitively out of the hands of the architect into those of the civil engineer. The transfer may indeed be said to have originated with one who was a bridge-builder, if he could not be called an architect, before he became an engineer. Thomas Telford was apprenticed to "a general house-builder" of Langholm in Dumfries, and when the future designer of the Menai Bridge, and the engineer of some of the greatest works that had ever been undertaken in this country, first set up as master on his own account, he was ready to undertake any kind of masonry, from cutting letters on grave-stones, to the building of country byres, highland churches, or plain stone bridges. When he came to London he worked for awhile under Chambers on Somerset House, then in course of erection. He felt no hesitation therefore, on the score of professional disqualification, when required as county surveyor to construct a bridge of some size across the Severn at Montford. This was a stone bridge of the usual type, but in it he introduced some valuable constructive modifications. His next bridge, which crossed the Severn at Buildwas, was of iron on stone piers, and was long regarded as a model of its class. An iron bridge had been built at Coalbrookdale in 1775. Telford's iron bridge was erected in 1795-6, and was a vast improvement on its predecessor. It consisted of an unusually flat arch of 150 feet span. An iron bridge erected about the same time at Sunderland by Mr. T. Wilson, consisted of a single arch of 236 feet span, and of such a height above the river as to permit the passage under it of vessels of 300 tons burden. The success of these important works insured the use of the new material. Telford was employed upon engineering works of enormous extent, in the course of which he had to erect many hundred bridges, and he employed iron or stone indifferently according to the nature of the locality, and the greater economy or fitness of either material in each particular case. Telford's grand works, the Highland Roads and Bridges, the Caledonian Canal, the Ellesmere Canal, the Holyhead Road, and others of scarcely less importance, belong to this period, but hardly fall within the compass of a survey of the Fine Arts. In the Highland improvements alone he constructed above a thousand miles of new road, and twelve hundred bridges; on the line of the Ellesmere Canal he spanned the valleys of the Dee and the Chirk with aqueducts of a greater height and magnitude than had been previously ventured upon; while several of the bridges on the Holyhead road were of importance both as engineering works, and as works of art. Such especially was the grand Menai Suspension Bridge, begun in 1819, a work that has indeed been surpassed as an engineering triumph by its neighbour, the tubular bridge of Robert Stephenson, but in beauty the suspension bridge far excels its younger rival.

John Rennie, the elder, like his great compatriot Telford, was of humble Scottish origin. His earliest occupation was that of a millwright, but his remarkably mechanical ingenuity brought him into notice, and he was while yet a young man employed on works requiring much constructive skill. He settled in London as an engineer about 1782. In 1799 he commenced a handsome stone bridge of five arches at Kelso, and he afterwards constructed some others that were much admired. But his chief work in this line was

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RENNIE-WATERLOO BRIDGE-SCULPTURE.

[1784-1820. Waterloo Bridge, which he commenced in 1811, and completed in 1817, at a cost of above a million. This is by general consent one of the noblest bridges of modern times. Indeed for simple grandeur of character, convenience of roadway, and stability of construction, it would be difficult to name its peer among bridges of any earlier period, and the only bridge of subsequent erection which has, in this country at least, equalled or surpassed it in these most important particulars is the new London Bridge, for which Rennie himself made the designs, though its erection was confided to his sons George and John. The iron bridge which crosses the Thames at Southwark was another of Rennie's bridges. The iron bridge at Vauxhall was designed and erected by Mr. James Walker. Rennie's magnificent engineering works, the East and West India Docks, with their vast ranges of warehouses; the London Docks; the Prince's Dock, Liverpool; Plymouth Break water, and the improvements carried out by him in the Government dockyards of Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Pembroke, with other important works at various harbours, proofs of the amazing growth of the country in wealth and commerce, and of the great increase of engineering skill, rather than works of Fine Art, can only be mentioned here.

In Sculpture the leading artists were Flaxman, Banks, Bacon, and Nollekens, all of whom have been spoken of in a previous chapter, and Chantrey and Westmacott, who belong more particularly to a later period. Our notice of sculpture may therefore on the present occasion be very brief. The first two of the sculptors just named, produced during this period some works of great poetic power, and the last also executed some of much beauty. But in the main sculpture dealt rather with portraits of the living and memorials of the dead, than with efforts of imagination. And in monuments of a public character, especially those with which the nation honoured the men who had fought her battles by land and sea, our sculptors continued to repeat with strange persistency the conventionalisms and machinery which had for ages ceased to have any intelligent meaning, or to affect either the heart or the understanding of any class of spectators. British soldiers and sailors, and even senators, philanthropists, and philosophers, were clad in the scanty folds of a "classical" drapery, in some instances almost without drapery at all, and, although the monuments were to be erected in the midst of a Christian cathedral, and in full view of a congregation engaged in Christian worship, were surrounded with heathen gods, goddesses, and attributes; or if, as was sometimes the case, the hero wore his full regulation uniform, he yet had his due attendance of undraped heathen deities. Banks was unfortunately one who yielded most unreservedly to this classic misconception. The monuments to Captains Burgess and Westcott in St. Paul's, two of the latest of his works, are among the least defensible of their class. Happily Banks will not be judged by his public monuments. The exquisite recumbent figure of Penelope Boothby in Ashbourne Church, showed with what pathos he could invest a private memorial when he trusted to the simple promptings of the feelings. His "Mourning Achilles," of which the model is in the British Gallery, no patron having had sufficient taste to commission its execution in marble, is perhaps the noblest work of the kind produced by an English sculptor; and in other works he excelled as much in grace as here in grandeur.

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