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Insufficient Superintendence.

6

so until we have some better evidence than the divination of a reviewer of that 'instinctively harmonious working of separate workmen in perfect and spontaneous concert with a general design' spoken of just now. But it is evident that much more was left to the taste of the workmen, from the highest downwards to the mere cutter of mouldings, than is ever done now. Carving undoubtedly was left to the carvers, who are in fact sculptors, and therefore artists'; and so it is now in all the best work, at least of the Gothic kind. Whether it is in those things like black puddings coated with leaves, which adorn Renaissance architecture, I really do not know. The capitals of the columns of that style too are so purely conventional and have so little variety that there is hardly anything for a carver's taste to expatiate in. But except the carving, nothing now-a-days is left to anybody below the architect. The contractor expects to have every detail sent down to him from the architect's office and calculated to measure in the 'quantities' beforehand. So that the master workman and his men have sunk into mere machines for executing the design. Consequently there is no designer living on the work and seeing it from day to day and observing how things look as soon as they are begun, or trying them by models: nobody finds out until too late whether details look too big or too little, or suitable to others in the same building. The consequences of this have been pointed out over and over again, in the universal disproportion which prevails in many of our buildings, and in the details often looking as if they were not designed at all, but copied at random from some stereotyped forms of the office, which had themselves been copied, perhaps incorrectly, at some time from

Models v. Drawings.

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genuine ones, and sent down with no regard to scale or appropriateness of any kind. I have one memorable case of this sort, where I found a church door jamb building in what looked to me an extraordinary shape. The architect-a most eminent one-assured me that it must be right, as it was copied from St. Mary's Abbey at York. I replied that I did not believe it. It turned out that we were both right; for St. Mary's door jamb had been copied, i.e. a published drawing of it, but the paper and the splay had been turned the wrong way, through 90°, and nobody in the office or on the ground had found it out.

Models v. Drawings. It may be said that the architects see their work after it is done, and can avoid repeating faults which they have made once. But the question is not whether they can but whether they do. If they did complaints of the badness of our architecture would not be so universal as they are. The fact is that faults are not perceived in that way, by a cursory ex post facto inspection with no desire to discover them, as they would be if every thing were treated as an experiment at first. There is not the least doubt that in the ages of imperfect drawing they worked far more by trial than we do now. I never had a first model made of anything from which it was not easy to see that it might be improved; and yet every one of them would have been executed from the drawings if I had not had models made. Sections across mouldings, plinths, and other such details, can give nobody any idea, at least none that can be trusted, how they will look. Even a difference of material, between one kind of stone or wood and another, sometimes makes a great difference in the appearance, and in the kind of execution required to produce a good effect. All these

things we may be sure were looked after carefully by designers on the spot, who saw and were anxious to see the effect of their work from day to day. In the modern way of building they are, practically speaking, not looked after at all. And that is the real difference between the designing by old Master-workmen and designing by modern Architects; always remembering that builders are not a bit more likely to have good taste than mere designers, and probably much less, though there are occasional exceptions to that rule.

Finish.--At the same time I agree with the critics I have been criticising, that the effect of the present system of reducing everybody below the architect to a mere machine tends to degrade the taste of all of them, and has done more than anything else to give all modern work that mechanical and spiritless appearance which critics have been censuring for years. In other words, 'finish' is the only aim of the modern workman, if he aims at anything beyond the Trades union object of doing as little and as ill as will be tolerated. Notwithstanding all that has been written on this point, and never questioned, so far as I know, I am sorry to say it has been but very feebly and unwillingly (if at all) seconded by architects, however theoretically they may have occasionally assented to it. Those who have occasionally done so, and allowed the common provisions for 'dragging,' pointing, polishing, and general dressing up, to be erased from the specification for some one building, let their clerks go on ordering the very same things ever afterwards.* In vain it is pointed out to them and they admit, that

* I am glad to see an exception made at last, in no longer polishing and waxing oak in some churches; but it went on for some time after I had stopped it at Doncaster Church.

Execution of Gothic Work.

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the very works they pretend to imitate were executed in a totally different fashion from theirs; that the old builders cared nothing about precision and finish; nay more, that they knew it makes things look monotonous and spiritless; that though they regarded symmetry of the larger parts of buildings where there was not good reason to neglect it, they knew that details should not be too much alike.

Take for example the common Early English 'tooth moulding.' Did anybody ever see a foot run of it from modern hands that gave the slightest pleasure? Why? because it looks as if it could be turned out by the mile from a steam engine. Whereas in old work you see that it had just the same kind of variety as in leaves of the same tree—all alike but none identical, in the sense of the proverb 'nullum simile est idem.' The modern imitations of Early English conventional carving are still worse, for the same reason; and as for imitating Norman work, it is better at once to give up trying, except where it must be done in restorations; which in that case above all others are mere destruction precipitated instead of stopped, so far as architectural effect is concerned, though they are of course sometimes necessary to prevent ruin. The aim of everybody engaged in a building now, from the architect down to the last workman who'drags' and points up, is to make the work look smart for the opening day. What becomes of it afterwards, either as to use or appearance, or duration, not one of them seems to care a farthing generally, though I admit there are exceptions, who are really anxious to do their work as well as possible when they find an employer who appreciates that more than the ornamental rubbish which captivates committees and a good many private people too.

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A French Architect's Education.

As for the practical results of the present mode of getting architecture done, though the Quarterly Review statements and theories about art workmen and masterbuilders are grossly exaggerated, and in some respects refuted by experience, I must say I agree with the criticisms in a former article of April 1872, of most of our grandest recent attempts, which it is not worth while to enumerate again.

Architectural Education.-The most eminent of French architects, Viollet le Duc, expresses quite as unfavourable an opinion of the ordinary architectural education in his country as our most severe critics have of ours; and perhaps his description is not entirely inapplicable here. In his 'architectural novelette' called "How to build a house' (which had better have been confined to the house-building and condensed into half its bulk), he makes his hero Paul a young architect ask his teacher, 'Did you begin to learn architecture in this way?' i.e. by acting as the clerk of the works yourself. The teacher, who I suppose is intended for M. Viollet le Duc himself, answers, O by no means. I was articled to an architect for two years, who set me to copy drawings of buildings of which I was not told either the age or the country or the use; then to lay on tints. During this time I took lessons in mathematics, geometry, and drawing from models' (which I suspect would not be applicable to most articled clerks here, and therefore I omit a little more of that stage of the history) 'I was obliged therefore (and by want of employment afterwards) to get into an office, i.e. to work for so much an hour at an architect's who was in large practice. There I learnt to trace plans, and nothing else, except now and then to make some detail drawings-Heaven knows