more rapid means of transport have anything to
do with the more rapid decay of modern buildings
erected from stone obtained out of the
same quarries which produced stone three and
even more centuries ago, so little affected by
weather, that the chisel marks, mouldings, and
arrises, are as fresh now as they were the
first day of erection? Men and machinery,
more powerful than any known in mediæval
times, get stone quicker in the quarry; canals
and railways remove it more quickly to the site
of the building; improved scaffolding, staging,
and machinery, set it more quickly in the building;
and then the weather, which ought to have
been allowed to find out all the soft and defective
stones in the quarry before the masons
worked them, now finds them cut and carved
into rich tracery, and set in the building ready
to be crumbled rapidly to premature ruin.

Stones, like timber, to be used in building,
should be well seasoned by exposure to weather.
But in these modern railroad times,
building goes on too quickly for endurance and
security; hence, prematurely rotten ships on
the water, and mouldering buildings on the land.

Great Britain is at present in tribulation
because of the rapid decay of stone used at the
new palace at Westminster. Poor old John
Bull has been bothered by Commissioners'
"Reports, with Reference to the Selection of Stone
for Building the new Houses of Parliament,"
having first been wheedled by architects into
selecting a plan and estimate, the one modest
in appearance, the other moderate in amount.
The modest elevation has now been developed
into most profuse elaboration of carvings in
thousands of repetitions, and the moderate
estimate of some seven hundred thousands of
pounds has been swelled into the vast sum of
two millions two hundreds of thousands of
pounds sterling. The results are a vast pile of
carved stones, ranks of pinnacles, hundreds of
weather-cocks (vanes), gilded towers. But all
prematurely crumbling rapidly, to decay. In the
midst of this costly disappointment, quack
after quack rushes to the rescue; one, to improve
the sewers; another, to amend the acoustics; a
third, to take charge of the ventilation; and now
there is a grand struggle of doctors with patented
specifics to stop the cause of decay.

All the business connected with the new palace
at Westminster appears to have been
commenced in error. The site is below extreme
high-water level of the adjoining river. The
sewers and drains are therefore blocked, for a
considerable period of each tide. The style of
architecture, or the mode of carrying out such
style, is a mistake. The stone, chosen with so
much apparent forethought, searching experiment,
and care, proves to be among the worst
ever used in the metropolis.

In discussing the merits of stone for building
purposes, architectural style is necessarily
involved. Florid architecture has upon it, and
about it, conditions facilitating rapid decay.
Such as projecting plinths and buttresses,
strings and label mouldings, cornices, mullions,
transoms and tracery, canopies, pinnacles, with
flying buttresses and groined stone ceilings, all
offering vast surfaces to the action of weather.
Wind, sunshine, rain, fog, and frost, have full
play; soil and soot settle in sinkings, and on
ledges; sparrows, pigeons, and jackdaws, add
sticks and dung to retain wet in all openings
and recesses, and so help the work of destruction.

In scientific evidence on the properties and
qualities of building-stones, the question of
style in architecture does not seem to have
received the attention it most undoubtedly
deserves. A full catalogue of the abbeys,
cathedrals, churches, and other buildings, at home
and abroad, erected in the florid style of Gothic
architecture, with the names of the stones used,
the dates of erection, the amount of enrichment,
the dates of decay and numbers of repairings,
might have called attention to the bad
consequences of repeating works on a large scale,
liable to such contingencies.

The Commissioners who reported in 1839, have
enumerated the names of some few buildings in
England, and have stated dates and conditions as
to endurance and decay. They actually say in one
paragraph: "Buildings which are highly decorated
afford a more severe test of the durability of
any given stone, all other circumstances being
equal, than the more simple and less decorated
buildings, inasmuch as the material employed in
the former class of buildings is worked into
more disadvantageous forms than in the latter, as
regards exposure to the effects of the weather."
If this most important element in the inquiry
obtained thus much notice from the
Commissioners, it evidently never had any weight
nor consideration with the architect, as enrichment
upon enrichment was added, without, it
has been said, either the knowledge or the
sanction of the Commissioners of Her
Majesty's Works and Buildings, or of the
committee of the Commons; the money voted,
from time to time, having been expended in
elaborate carvings, which have swelled the cost
of the building to an enormous amount, and
brought the reputation of the architect to grief.

The report of 1839 comprises a mass of
information which will remain a text-book on this
subject. The information is most useful, but its full
value can only be brought out by a proper
application of this knowledge in practice. The
report states that stones most generally used
for building purposes, are sandstones or limestones.
Sandstones are generally composed of
quartz or siliceous grains cemented by siliceous,
argillaceous, calcareous, or other matter. Limestones
are composed of carbonate of lime and
carbonates of lime and magnesia, either nearly
pure or mixed with variable proportions of foreign
matter. Varieties of limestones termed
oolites, are composed of oviform bodies cemented
by calcareous matter of varied character. There
are limestones termed "shelly," from being
chiefly formed of shells, broken or entire,
cemented by calcareous matter. Micaceous
sandstones are very frequently laminated; that