Speaking of them, as of other London edifices,
merely as they show outside, and not entering into
the question of their internal arrangements and
adaptability to the purpose for which they were
intended, regarding them from a decorative
point of view only, there is this to be said in
their favour: it is a great achievement to have
completed so huge an undertaking at all, and to
have made such a mark as this upon the earth.
It is a symmetrical and consistent whole, its
lines and proportions are very agreeable, its
details are well carried out, and it is altogether
formed upon the best models of the period to
which it professes to belong. In a word, there
is everything here but genius–genius with its
inconsistencies, genius with its failures, genius
with its absurdities, if you will, but still with
that one power of interesting you which it alone
possesses. This is what line and plummet
cannot do. There is no accuracy of copying,
however close, no reproduction of ancient marvels,
however laborious, that can hold us, lost in that
pleased surprise with which we regard, for the
first time, those achievements which have been
put forth by a new and creative mind. To feed
upon the produce of other men, to revive the
glories of a previous age, to build upon those
models which the schools have established, may
be the course which it is safest for those to adopt
who feel no wealth of new invention in their
hearts, and whom no audacious promptings from
within urge on to glorious aspiration, to
dangerous flights, and sometimes to disastrous falls.
With such falls we sympathise, such flights carry
us with them, and at the sight of such aspirations
our own breath comes fast and thick.
The pomposities of Wren, and the wild
extravagancies of Vanbrugh, will not hinder the
admiration of any mind but a narrow and prejudiced
one, and it is not to criticise, but to wonder, that
we pause before St. Paul's Cathedral, or linger
at the gates of Blenheim.

The first great defect of the buildings at
Westminster is that, in the chronological history
of our town, as told by its architecture, they are
wholly valueless. In the Tower of London, in
Westminster Abbey (nay, in every alteration
and addition to that church), in Whitehall, in
St. Paul's Cathedral, we find plain and
unmistakable evidence of the period to which each of
these structures belongs. But there is nothing
to mark those Houses of Parliament as having
been raised in the reign of Victoria. In addition
to this fault, there is another of less, but
still of some, importance. Granting that this
edifice was to be founded on some old and
established type, and waiving, for the moment, the
objection that it should have marked and
represented in some distinct way the age to which it
belongs, there is yet this great defect in its
construction, that it is too uniform in its
surfaces, too minute in its ornamentation, and that
the eye is stinted of those great massive shadows,
and those varied effects of light in which it revels,
and which there was surely nothing in the
exigencies of the building to render impossible.

But if it was not the fortune of the builder of
the new Parliament Houses to call into existence
such a structure as shall seduce the passer-
by into a temporary forgetfulness of the business
which brought him to Westminster; it is at
least certain that there is nothing here calculated
to disgrace us, nor any place for such
strong condemnation as is imperatively called.
for by that disastrous failure the new bridge at
Battersea. There is no attack too ferocious for
this paltry toy. To ride roughshod over this
wretched thoroughfare, and to resent the infliction
upon us of this permanent and unavoidable
eyesore, is to yield to a just and righteous
indignation, such as this offence against taste most
certainly merits. When a great engineering
difficulty is overcome, but conquered in a
clumsy and ungainly fashion, we may regret, it
is true, that the victory was not to be achieved
more gracefully, but we are still resigned and
satisfied; but when what is in these days a
small feat only has to be accomplished, we are
less tolerant of its offences against the laws of
beauty. We can again stand pretty patiently
all forms of sturdy disfigurement, and those
kinds of ungainliness which are characterised
by strength; but for flimsy ugliness, and those
external defects which belong to the gimcrack
order, we neither have, nor should have, any
patience. And this bridge is essentially
gimcrack. It is like a child's toy made of tin. It
is based upon the model of those designs which
adorn the lids of children's colour-boxes, and
the cases in which three little blown bottles of
choicest perfumes are sold for sixpence. So
slight and trifling a structure does this bridge
appear, that, at a little distance, you almost fancy
it could be taken up and put away in the drawer
with the tin German soldiers, the magic lantern,
and the Noah's Ark. If the park to which this
conduit leads should ever attain to be a place of
popular resort, if the trees of Battersea Park
should ever reach to more than three feet of
height, then the ugliness of the new bridge
would become of even greater importance than
it is at present.

                 The Tenth Journey of
       THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER,
   A SERIES OF OCCASIONAL JOURNEYS,
              BY CHARLES DICKENS,
                Will appear in No. 60.

     Now ready, price 5s. 6d., bound in cloth,
             THE SECOND VOLUME,
Including Nos. 27 to 50, and the Christmas Double
     Number, of ALL THE YEAR ROUND.