Opposite Principles of it.

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made in pure ignorance, and utter disregard of what is after all the primary consideration in buildings that are not kept as mere ornamental ruins. Strangers of the dilettanti kind, and people who would be writing about gigantic gooseberries if they could find nothing else to write about, see something that they think picturesque or ancient in a church, and know nothing of its condition or capability of standing. Next time they come they find it gone. Off goes a letter to a newspaper, 'The church has been restored by Sir. G. Scott, and to my horror I found that such and such a thing of the most venerable antiquity had been removed to make way for '-perhaps the most. important thing in the building; but that is nothing to the antiquarian great gooseberry man.

The truth is that all these matters are beyond the reach of rules, but within the reach of common sense, as to what should be preserved or destroyed in a restoration. I defy anybody of real experience to deny that practically speaking our great churches are conservatively restored, as much as possible in the spirit of their own builders, by the school of architects of which Sir G. Scott is the head, who do not talk about it, and that they are restored in the style of radical reformers by those who do talk the cant of conservative restoration. A church which has passed through their hands, has practically ceased to be a building of any known English Gothic style, and become a mongrel of their own style, if they have been allowed to have their own way, and it requires a pretty strong hand to prevent it. At the same time I never would rebuild a thing which is incurably decayed, as a copy of the old one, if I thought it bad. It has lost the value of genuine antiquity by the course of nature, and it appears to me

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mere prudery and nonsense to copy that particular thing rather than build something more suitable or beautiful, as completely in the old spirit as you can. It is no use denying that some old things were ugly. While they have the interest of antiquity let them keep it; but when that is gone the ground is open to do the best we can.

Refacing old stone. This is about the most destructive and wasteful operation that can be performed under the name of restoration. Stone which has kept a tolerably good face for centuries, or what is better, has got covered with that brown vegetation which is a symptom of the surface not perishing at all, will sometimes be hastened to destruction by having that surface 'tooled off.' A few years ago some architectural idiot persuaded the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln to begin it there. Luckily the alarm was raised before they had done much and the mischief was stopped. Even the black parts of St. Paul's are sound, and it is the white parts that are continually decaying.

Worcester cathedral tower, which was reduced to the meanest of them all, by all the decorative work having been at some time cut off, I suppose to save repairs, and all the top, above the upper windows, finished in mere brick and plaister of the meanest design, has been restored, chiefly at the expense of Lord Dudley, to one of the finest of our towers; indeed none of its own kind is in my opinion equal to it. And this shows how much more may be done by the judicious outlay of a few thousand pounds in restoring some fine old building than by setting an architect to work to spend far more in building up some fantastic little 'gem' of a chapel of your own; which will be praised by the bishop and the newspaper reporters on the consecration day, and the architect's health drunk,

Value of good Restoration.

295

and then no human being will ever care to look at it again. That is the real test of good building, whether people want to see it more than once, and it is one of the differences between the effect of good proportions on a large scale and extravagant decoration without them. I will venture to say that nobody ever went twice for the purpose of admiring, though they may go to show their friends, the most costly little churches which have been built in modern times, nor ever really thought them admirable for anything but their cost.

While Doncaster church was re-building, at the cost of 37,000l. for the building, which was cheap for its size, compared with many other modern churches, and 43,128. including everything, except the organ and painted windows since introduced, a gentleman in the neighbourhood used to condemn our extravagance ; but soon after, he set to work to build a chapel in a hamlet of his own parish, and spent on it twice as much per sitting as Doncaster church cost. I wonder which of us got the most for our money. I remember an equally costly little chapel being built in a small place near Bridlington, while that grand nave, of large cathedral dimensions, was crying out for restoration, being almost in ruins. It has since been restored, but, for want of funds, very inadequately for its merits. Rich people, who know little of these things from their own experience, may take my word for it as a builder of no small experience, both on a large and small scale, that the restoration of a great old church, whose proportions modern architects can neither spoil nor copy (as it seems) will pay them infinitely better interest for their money in every way that they can wish to have it, than anything new that they can build. Of course I am only speaking of ornamental outlay in building.

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Value of good Restoration.

Just now there is St. Albans Abbey, with the finest part of the longest Gothic nave in the world, and the oldest great church in this kingdom, only kept from actually falling by being shored up with timber. It wants at least 30,000l. to restore it safely and thoroughly. Set the best architect you think you know to build you the finest church he can for 30,000l. Do you imagine that you would get anything comparable to St. Albans? Yet some persons have spent much more than that in building mere chapels overlaid with costly decoration which gives nobody any lasting pleasure; and multitudes of people turn a London 'decorator' into their drawing rooms to spend in paint and gilding and silk and satin, which will all be shabby in ten years, twice as much as would restore that cathedral if a dozen of them combined for the purpose.

CHAPTER VI.

Domes-The great Pyramid-Sizes and Proportions of large Churches and Halls.

I SAID that I should treat of domes separately from octagons in the position of a central tower. I may as well repeat the introduction to a paper of my own on the theory of domes, in the Transactions of the R.I.B.A. of February 1871.

'Perhaps in this age of iron no great dome of masonry will be ever built again, yet we must all admit that the two great iron and glass domes of the 1862 Exhibition, of which one was afterwards moved to a much handsomer (but equally short lived) building at the Alexandra Park, or that of the British Museum reading room, though they are as large as any masonry dome in the world, or the flatter oval dome of the Albert Hall, which covers twice the space of those, being 220 ft. x 185, (and now the still larger one of the Vienna Exhibition, 360 ft. in diameter) have excited no such interest as is still felt in the comparatively unscientific fabrics of the Pantheon and St. Peter's at Rome, the Cathedral of Florence, the Gol Gomuz of Beejapore, and even the flat segmental domes of St. Sophia at Constantinople and St. Vitale at Ravenna, which last is made of pots. I suppose everybody will agree with Mr. Fergusson that a dome is the most perfect roof that has ever been invented, especially on a