themselves. The nodding plumes give way before
red noses, the palls and horsecloths are thrust
inside, and the slow coach breaks into a fast
trot.

   OUR EYE-WITNESS AMONG THE
                    BUILDINGS.

THE subject which we are now considering
is one in every way on a much larger scale than
that (of the London Statues) which we last took
in hand. Not only does every one of the houses,
in every one of the streets, contribute an item
to the architecture of London, but besides this,
there is this fact to be remembered, that while
the oldest of our London statues—properly so
called— dates no further back than the time of
Charles the First, there are buildings in London
whose pedigrees are older than that of the
Rake's father-in-law in Hogarth's Marriage a
la Mode.

Whether that gradual decline, which was
traced in our Metropolitan Statues, has its
prototype in the chronological history of the London
Buildings, is a question which, because of the
difference of style in such structures as Westminster
Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, and the
special beauties of each, it is difficult to decide;
but this at least maybe affirmed, and affirmed with
confidence, that, after the period of the building
last named, the descent was rapid and continuous,
and that, at the time when the statues
began to be at their worst, our buildings were
at their vilest too.

But there is certainly one respect in which
we are better off in an architectural than a
sculpturesque point of view: whereas it was
distinctly proved that our very last productions
in the way of statues were the worst of all, and
that the steps which might be taken to improve
our city in this respect were neglected, it is certain
that architecturally our unhappy metropolis
has got over the worst, and that some unmistakably
favourable symptoms are beginning to
appear. For, though we have recently been guilty
of a bridge—at Battersea—which is calculated to
fill us with despair, that is yet but a degradation of
an already rather hopeless neighbourhood, and we
may feel pretty secure that no one of our great
public sites will ever again be burdened with
such a range of building as that which occupies
the northern side of Trafalgar-square, or by
such gimcrack tenements as border that fashionable
thoroughfare which goes by the cheap and
unpromising name of Regent-street.

If ever the day should arrive when he who
ascends the Monument on Fish-street-hill is
able to see anything besides smoke, one of the
first things that would catch his attention
would be the "four grey walls, and four
grey towers" of the fortress of London. Low-lying,
compact, snug, at once suggestive of its
purpose and agreeable to the eye, there is in
the Tower of London nothing to complain of.
From the river, from London-bridge, from every
point of view the Tower is always a pleasant
feature of the town which it is supposed to protect.
If we built a fortress to guard our city
now, we should do it doubtless on different
principles, and pile it high in the air. When that
Tower was first made, what was there to be
gained by height ? They had no cannon then
with which to rake the river, and lying low as
we see it, the occupants of the place were out
of the way of the arrows which, it must be
remembered, were but straight-flying projectiles,
and could not, like the modern shell, drop from
the sky into the middle of a garrison. When
that Tower was built, there were but few and
simple objects to be borne in mind in its
construction, nor did invention move at such a
rate as it does now, when while the preparations
are making to meet the new discovery, another
takes place which renders those preparations
useless. There is a kind of lazy luxury now
about the act of looking at such a structure as
the Tower, and thinking how little one would
have had to do to cut a figure in the days when
it was built. For the rest, it is a castle that
defies our criticism; for it fulfilled its purpose in
its day, and had neither pretension nor
impotence—or both, as sometimes happens—to
make it amenable to ridicule. There is no
fortress of any sort, material or otherwise, but is
wholly impregnable if it do but fulfil the duties
of its station, and pretends to nothing that it
cannot perform.

If this little more than negative achievement
is great: if it is much to perform what is
promised even when the promise is a small one,
what is it to offer a great pledge, and to redeem
it, to aim at mighty altitudes and to reach them,
to give a word of promise of incalculable value,
and keep it to the last iota of the contract?
And all this is done, as far as the first builders
were concerned, in the cathedral church at
Westminster; the first "builders" it is repeated,
for he who added the chapel of Henry the Seventh
did no injury to the building, although the new
chapel was of a widely different style. He presented
his new offering at the old shrine, but gave
it in his own language, and in no attempt to mimic
that, which nevertheless, he admired, of the older
period. Such are the additions—or else none at
all—that can be made to an old edifice without
offence. If the style of your period—and every
period should have a style—will not suit the
old building, then you must leave it alone.
Would that Sir Christopher Wren had done
this, and then the towers at the west end of our
abbey would never have been raised to disfigure
it. Wren had a manner of his own, and a fine
one, but it would have been ridiculous to use it
in connexion with the Westminster church, and,
feeling this, he tried to go back and revive what
belonged to another age, and to resuscitate a
corpse. He should have let the Abbey alone, as
Sir Hans Sloane did the smaller edifice spoken
of by Pope. Let us have no restorations. Mend,
if you will, repair as much as you like, but never
attempt to return to the past. No more classics,
no more medievalisms, no more bran-new gothic
architecture, no more illumination. These things
have all been done, done gloriously and perfectly,