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contrast and gradation of bright sunshine and deep shade can architectural effects be gained. The ampler, therefore, the potentiality of light, the more effective and more charming can the work be made.

But then the light itself must be employed, just as the stone is used, artistically, and with appropriate volume and variety. A moulding is cut deep to get contrasted light and shade; it is made round or open to obtain a delicate gradation of these local tones. And the old workman, ever present at the building, thus invented, rather than designed, the Early English mouldings that we all admire. But if, as sometimes happens in interiors, the lights cross one another, the poetic labour of the workman may be neutralized; its suitable effects may fail, from want of proper shadow. In such cases deep stained glass may be of real architectural value.

Thus, in the transepts of an Abbey or Cathedral Church, the flood of light from every side might leave no shade; and all the details of the stonework might be unrelieved, tame and monotonous. But with the windows of one front toned down judiciously with coloured glass, the light from the end windows of the other transept would be made effective right across the church; and forms and details would be emphasized in an artistic way. There would be the appropriate chiaroscuro, which in painting is well recognized, but which in architecture is too often overlooked. This shows how needful is trained architectural experience and observation at the building; so entirely different from the inartistic, clerkly method of professional control, on which the Royal Institute of British Architects relies, when even seeking to conduct examinations.

Apsidal and square east ends of churches may need coloured glass in certain windows as a blind. At Westminster, to those who do not understand these things, the stained glass in the east triforium may appear absurdly placed; so distant as to be but little valued. Were it removed, however, its great use would be immediately evident; the apse would be obscured by an excess of concentrated and contrasted light. But, on the other hand, additional deep-toned, memorial glass has been of late inserted in the windows, to the increasing obscuration, even to the effective architectural annihilation, of the church. The public, wholly ignorant of architectural art, the dilettanti and the clergy, still more dangerous with their little knowledge, have, it seems, assumed that since stained glass appears in various Gothic windows, therefore all such windows should be filled with coloured glass, with no regard at all to the elaborated architecture of the building.

During the Middle Ages, as the men of wealth became increasingly desirous of display, good architecture was quite insufficient for their purpose, and the masons' work became prosaic, and mechanical, and large. The churches after the black death' were, as a special piety, made twice or thrice as spacious as could ever be required; and, instead of walling, there were merely buttresses and glass. Wide, transomed, lofty windows of the gridiron form were filled with pictures badly drawn; the building was toned down to dulness, and the glass was more effective than the masonry. The beholder looked up from the nugatory building to the glaring but obscuring colour, instead of studying the building under proper window-light. The church was thus subordinated to a decoration. It was made 'complete'; the incidental dominating the essential; an unfailing test and evidence of architectural debasement. And at Westminster such degradation of the Abbey Church, and also of St. Margaret's, is now in steady progress, under the direction of some member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The great

working men who left the choir at Westminster adroitly incomplete, had never certainly intended to obscure, and bury in deep darkness, their magnificent and richly-moulded masons' work.

Thus architectural art is possible and vivifying only when the leader of the workmen is continually present at the building, and when drawing clerks are placed below the working master, not above him. Art is a work, and not a mere proa business; and the wrist and shoulder, not the fingers, or a clerkly ledger, are the means of its production. Still, to many not habitually acquainted with artistic work, the difference between true art and imitation may appear obscure. To give an illustration: furniture by Chippendale is for the present much in vogue; and if a genuine old chair is carefully examined, it will be observed that on the plainer parts the artistic carver's tool-marks are retained, not smoothed away. The carver, as an artist, held that his best work, the carving, should be treated with the highest finish, and that therefore the plain work immediately surrounding it should be, in due subordination, less complete; suggesting that the enrichment had engaged his thought supremely, and that the plainer work was, in proportion, undervalued. It is in artistic work, just as in Nature's own designs, that such gradational contrivances occur; but in the modern, inartistic imitation, everything is made monotonously smooth and lifeless.

After this description of the true artistic method, let us turn

to

to modern architectural practice as exhibited in works which illustrate that test and guarantee of business aptitude, artistic power, and professional intelligence, the Royal Institute of British Architects. No unfair selection will be made, nor is there in our critical remarks upon contemporary works or institutions the least personal reflection. We are dealing with a public Institute, its works and its proposals, and we wish

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to give the public an unbiassed statement of their interest in

the matter.

Recently, a stoneware manufacture, a mechanical and moulded substitute for art, in constant repetition throughout a whole building, and apparently in many buildings, has been much employed. It is of a nauseous reddish-yellow tint, the most revolting in a mass that could have been produced. At Holborn Bars there is a hard, metallic-looking specimen of this poor ornament, and at St. Paul's School, Hammersmith, there is another; but at South Kensington, the new Museum of Natural History is perhaps the largest London work on which

it has been used. The general design is suited for a pattern by which building blocks, a well-known nursery toy, might be arranged to please the children and the maids, with every prospect of success. The building has its centre, formed like a cathedral front, its curtains, and its wings, in perfect symmetry. There is no actual need for such arrangement; the whole building might have been, at much less cost, in one straight line, and thus would have appeared the warehouse that it is. All this parade of composition is mere clap-trap; a plain wall with proper base and cornice, and with some artistic, workmanlike device on special features, would have been sufficient to secure due recognition for a public building; and thus, dignified and unpretending, the repository would, quite suitably, have been subordinate to its contents. The centre has a lofty and commodious balcony for priestly benedictions, and a doorway fit in scale for a cathedral nave, but mightily absurd as the way in to several floors some twenty feet in average height. The small, glazed arches in the tympanum, indeed, are made to light some little offices; and all this radiance of costly-looking moulded work in jambs and arches centres sometimes in a pair of small glass jars containing specimens of water weeds, a careless exhibition at the window.

The octagonal and oblong terminations of the east and western towers have no meaning; they are merely an expense, an element in what the architects, who make such things, call composition. The design is made to look peculiar, as if it were original; whereas it merely is absurd, and foolishly elaborate. A museum needs no turrets with high pinnacles, no church front with flanking towers and an egregious doorway, nor a multiplicity and mass of cast clay mouldings, corbels, bases, hideous caricatures of animals, and bastard tracery. These things can appeal to no artistic feeling. There is no architectural art in these so-called enrichments; they are only base and vitreous imitations of an art that works on wholly different material, and is developed, not in baking ovens, but by the accomplished handicraft of the ideal artisan. Nor does the apposition of mechanically moulded and illfitting blocks of crooked earthenware become, by its extent and multiplied pretence, a work of art. The place is mostly for the exhibition of small specimens of nature's handicraft, a covering and ward for valuables. These, and not the building, are the exhibition; and the show of sham elaboration of enrichment, representing neither labour, nor immediate and workmanlike intelligence and fancy, is an architectural impertinence.

It may be said that since this is a public building it should be in some way ornamental; and that public buildings should be treated with distinction. Certainly; and with distinction of the highest kind, with common sense; and, if attainable, with true artistic feeling. But in this Museum we have architectural dulness; though in these respects it may be in the main attractive and appropriate to many a beholder. Most men, at the present time of architectural obscuration, are unable to distinguish art from ornament'; and would insist that ornament, however made, is to their 'taste,' and must be art. And herein lies our reason for the present critical remarks; the public need some independent information on

the matter.

Thus the whole of this decorative work is waste; and half the walling also is useless expenditure. It acts as an obstruction to the user of the building; light and circulation are impeded. For a museum a high light and plenty of it is the special need; but here the window heads are filled with a coarse substitute for tracery just where a plain square window is required. If the broad window jambs, the arches, and the tracery within the outer line of moulding were entirely cleared away, the work would look quite rich enough; and, with the openings filled with metal frames and glass, the building would express itself as the great show-place that it is.

The deficiency of light in proper distribution is continued on the upper staircase; and the cloud that overhangs Sir Joseph Banks is really disrespectful. On each lateral corridor are placed some little cases for the very smallest birds; and if a critical beholder will compare the height and costliness of this compartment of the building with the size and weight of the exhibits there, he may be led to understand how difficult it is to get appropriate public buildings for our various collections. This is the way in which the architectural profession, represented by the Royal Institute of British Architects, may waste the money of the public in sham art and gross absurdity. To see these birds of Paradise pure daylight is desired; but here we have the windows, large enough just where there is the least to show, completely filled with common parti-coloured glass, not fit for a conventicle. Even in the attics there is want of light below, upon the specimens ; while this obscurity is emphasized by the bright light upon the plastering of the skylight walls. In the front galleries, what most catches the attention is the long obtrusive ceiling, not the overshadowed specimens below. The contrast of a huge and empty staircase leading to these wretched crypts is most effective in its own preposterous way.

The

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