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The Modern Queen Anne Style.

The new Queen Anne style is a very different thing, being a mere jumble of Italian and Gothic features with most of the disadvantages of both. The name is of very little consequence in either case, but one of the things is good and the other bad. Both the so-called Queen Anne styles have however the merit of requiring no stone except in the window sills, which is an advantage in London and smoky towns, where stone or at any rate carved stone is little more than wasted. The money wasted in carving stone for such places benefits nobody after a few years except the architects and builders who were paid for doing it, for all the carving gets choked up with dirt and becomes invisible for any ornamental purpose. The workmen might far better have been employed in doing something else, as they would have been.

Proportions.-Modern architects, and amateur no less than professional ones, seem to have run wild on the fundamental question of proportions, and chiefly the proportion between the height and length of all buildings, especially in the Gothic styles; though latterly the mania for height has extended to the other styles as well, and nobody will even have an ‘Italian villa' now without a tower, which I believe is generally devoted to the combustion of tobacco. Whether that is the destination of that strange-looking tower which Sir Gilbert Scott thought fit to stick at the corner of the Foreign Office which Lord Palmerston made him spoil, I do not know. I disclaim the idea of laying down rules or propounding any theory for determining proportions. Various theories have been invented by ingenious men, only to be forgotten as soon as they are read. It is however a fact, easily verified by observation, that here in England, in the times of all the genuine styles,

Value of Length.

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length was treated as the main characteristic of grand buildings, while in foreign Gothic height was much more cultivated. It is also a fact, which people are constantly finding out too late in modern buildings, that all the other dimensions may be dwarfed, and the whole proportions made to look wrong, by height which is seen to be excessive as soon as it is done, though there is a constant tendency to increase it beforehand. Our town houses have become towers, and our towers chimneys. But no building is ever overpowered by its length. I do not mean that such a thing is impossible, but that they will bear any length which can be given to them within any practicable limits of extension. Even smallish houses, such as moderate parsonages, are generally made to look smaller than they are and insignificant by having no conspicuous dimension except their height, aggravated in the hands of modern Gothicists by roofs of absurdly high pitch, fit only for cathedrals which have wall enough not to be overpowered by the roof.

The modern requirement of higher rooms makes it difficult to build a small house so as to look large enough for its height, even with a roof of reasonable pitch, especially with due regard to economy which becomes more pressing yearly for houses of that class of ordinary parsonages. A few years ago I had to design a vicarage for St. James's, Doncaster, and partly for the above reason and partly for convenience in other respects I added to it what may be called a curate's house, putting the vicar's door in front and the curate's at the end; so that it has the architectural effect of a single house quite long enough for its height, and not of a semi-detached pair. At the same time I must observe that much more is generally wasted in

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Excessive height mischievous.

're-entering' angles, and therefore superfluous external walling, and fancy gables and inequalities in roofs than would serve to make a plain small house of sufficient length to look respectable.

But in large buildings, either public or private, except where every inch of ground has to be considered, there is no excuse for the excessive height which it is the fashion to aim at now; and so far from making buildings look grander it makes them look smaller. I have often found people incredulous that the new parish church of Doncaster is sixteen feet, which is equivalent to a whole bay, longer than the old one, which they say looked not shorter but longer than this. The reason is that the roof, and consequently the tower, are each about twenty-three feet higher than the old ones, which is a much greater proportionate addition than the increase of the length by about a ninth. Consequently every limb of the church is too short. I tried in vain to get it lengthened before a bit of wall was built, but people naturally trusted to the architect and the fact that the length was already increased sixteen feet. The tower has since been much improved by rebuilding the pinnacles four feet lower than before, after they had got loose from bad building, the clerk of the works having got too fat to superintend the work at that height properly. If I had to do it again I would reduce the height of the whole building, besides making the nave of six bays of the same width as the old ones instead of five of the larger size which they are now.

In the next best work of the same architect, Exeter College chapel, the same defect is still more conspicuous; but that was not so much his fault, because there was no room for greater length; but it ought

Length an English Characteristic.

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therefore not to have been so high and never would have been in old times. Buildings which are full of other faults are not worth noticing for this in particular, or I might cite them by dozens; so I mention one that is better than usual. The group forming Lincoln's Inn Hall and Library is generally considered one of the best modern ones of its kind. The proportions of the Hall pretty well fixed themselves by precedents: but as soon as he got free from them, the architect, Mr. Hardwick, committed the usual blunder of making the Library much too short for its height and width; and the Middle Temple one is worse. In 1872, as may be seen in Mr. Spilsbury's Guide to Lincoln's Inn,' our Library was lengthened on a plan of mine for adding three bays to the original five, with some new rooms below, and the S.W. staircase turret. Though some persons were afraid of it at first it is now universally admitted to be the handsomest room of the kind in London, and not even surpassed by any College Library except Wren's internally beautiful one at Trinity, which however is ugly enough outside, as nearly all his churches are except St. Paul's, though some of them are fine inside, even the ugliest of all, St. James's, Piccadilly.

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I have known churches improved acoustically as well as architecturally by being lengthened. When I am told that a church wants enlarging I always enquire first whether it can be lengthened. Length was the special characteristic of our great English churches, which are admitted to look larger for their size than foreign ones, however much some people admire the greater height of those. Old St. Paul's was the longest church in the world, as you may see by the catalogue

of large buildings at the end of the book.

It is also of some consequence that increase of

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Buildings may be too wide.

height gives no available increase of capacity, unless it is enough to add another story to a house; and therefore it is the most unprofitable redundancy of dimensions. A spare space of floor capacity adds greatly to the internal effect of any large building. Of course they should be high enough; but what is high enough in any given case is just one of the things which an eye for proportions will ascertain better without rules than with them. Unfortunately such eyes are very rare indeed; and some people almost seem to think that care about proportions is an obsolete mistake, that the business of an architect is to design in whatever happens to be the fashionable way in any shape he likes, and that all the beauty of architecture depends on sticking on plenty of ornamentation, and spending plenty of money. I have often said from observation that the worst way to get a handsome building is to tell an architect that 'expense is no object'; while if you tell him that it is, and that he must trust to his proportions for effect, you may have a chance of getting good ones, unless of course he is incapable of producing them, and you are also. For that incapacity there is no remedy, though gross mistakes might be avoided oftener than they are by merely attending to the proportions usually followed in old buildings of the same kind.

I say nothing particular about width as well as length, because in the case of single apartments under one roof, such as churches, halls and libraries, the width generally settles itself, as we may say, by various practical considerations: except that wideness together with great height of course aggravates the usual deficiency in length. For that reason York Minster looks too low inside, though none is higher, and none except