commonly near to mending; and certainly at
the beginning of this present century all matters
of taste were at their very, very worst. The
comparatively modern structures of about that
time are almost inconceivably vile, and quite
inconceivably sad and dispiriting. The London
University, spoken of above, is not calculated to
exhilarate the pupils who attend that seat of
learning, or to reconcile the patients in the
hospital opposite, to that life to which they have
been recalled. Nay, it exercises a baneful
influence over the street in which it stands, and it
is not till it gets near Bedford-square that
Gower-street is able to recover itself, and to
pluck up heart at all. Nor is the neighbouring
Museum, though of more recent date, and
narrowly missing what is grand and fine, a structure
that makes the animal spirits to leap with joy.
The great magnificence of the style aimed at
by this building lies in certain things—very
simple things—without which it is shorn of the
glory which, where those things exist, it may
boast of more, perhaps, than any other kind of
architecture that has ever been invented. Being
a style of architecture in which detail goes for
nothing, and in which everything depends on the
symmetry and beauty of the main outlines, it
follows that any defect in these is finally and
utterly destructive. Such a temple as that which
we have raised in Great Russell-street to the
memory of the Ancients, demands, as a sine qua
non, certain conditions, which, if the thing is to
be fine, must be fulfilled. The first and most
important of these is height, and the next is
space around, and especially in front of it. Were
the British Museum placed on rising ground
with a great square in front of it, were the
centre of it raised on a flight of steps so
that the bases of the columns were where the
capitals are at present, were there, then, a little
more length of building on each side of the
portico before the turn of the wings, we should
see much to admire in this edifice, and should be
struck and impressed by its grandeur. As it is
seen necessarily from a near point of view, the
projecting wings being much nearer the eye
than the central portion of the building, that
part of it which should rise majestically above
the mere tributary portions at the sides is, by
those inferior members itself, dwarfed and
debased, as any one may see who stands with his
back against the area railings which are
opposite this ambitious edifice. The British Museum
has, however, had a narrow escape of being a
fine building, and must, therefore—and because,
when the moon is shining above it, it is really
impressive—be treated with very much greater
respect than that other classical attempt which
represents our commercial greatness in the city.
The Royal Exchange is admirably calculated to
shake the confidence which the world is pleased
to bestow upon us, and looks like a structure
raised by a city of Jeremy Diddlers as a joint-stock
TEMPLE OF INSOLVENCY. It takes a walk
to the Guildhall, and a few minutes spent before
its capital old façade, with its store of windows,
and its pleasant waving line against the sky, to
get one back into a right condition of respect
for the resources of the City of London.

But worse than the Royal Exchange itself,
worse than the London University, worse than
even Buckingham Palace with its banners, its
trophies, its spike-emitting urns, and its
spear-brandishing Britannias, worse than the worst
of everything in the world, is that building which
represents the arts of this country, and in which
our national collection of works by the old
masters and our annual show of pictures by the
new, are exhibited to the admiring multitude.
If, as we have seen in considering the
characteristics of Somerset House—if the state of a
man's mind, when he designs a row of urns as an
ornament is a curious and interesting subject of
investigation, what shall be said of him who, as
has been the case with the architect of the National
Gallery, decorates the front of his building with
an interminable succession of blank stone win-
dows. It is a very doubtful thing whether in
the case where there occurs a space among
several real windows which requires filling up—
it is a grave question whether that dismal fiction
a blank window, is admissible even then, but to
have a row of blank windows across the whole
width of Trafalgar-square, to keep two small
practicable ones in countenance, is indeed an
unpardonable offence. But, perhaps, it will be
said that these are wanted to break the wall, as
ornaments? O architect! if you had
constructed your edifice aright, walls would have
been broken by the necessities of the building
itself.

But to what purpose is it to enter into this
minute criticism of an eyesore which, like the
Wellington Statue, is a standing grievance of
our town? To what purpose is it, after all, to
dwell upon the defects of this unhappy structure,
which in one word may be said to have everything
it ought not to have, and nothing which it
ought to have? It possesses windows without
glass, a cupola without size, a portico without
height, pepper-boxes without pepper, and the
finest site in Europe without anything to show
upon it!

We shall offend by such buildings no more.
The germ of improvement is surely showing
itself. Our glance at some of the principal
buildings of London, has shown us a decline
from the days of Wren, but there is also now
something to encourage us to look hopefully on
with a conviction that we shall not offend
(seriously) any more. The new Covent Garden
Theatre—though a portico with windows underneath
it is not pleasant to the eye—is a fine and
stately building; and the new Houses of Parliament,
though characterised by some aggravating
deficiencies, are not of the kind of edifices which
one feels inclined to laugh at.

It would be very painful were it necessary to
criticise with severity the work of one whose
loss is so recent as that of Sir Charles Barry.
But happily this is not the case. Compared with
anything that had gone before for many many
years, the Houses of Parliament come out as
almost great in their undoubted superiority.