you will know the many objects of interest they contain, especially to the architect. At Munich I accompanied Mr. Elmes to the roof of the Jesuits' Church, where we spent a long time, as he wished to ascertain various particulars respecting its construction, as he had formed the design of having a roof constructed of brick over St. George's Hall. With the aid of a dictionary and some slight knowledge of German, I was enabled to assist Mr. Elmes in his enquiries.

With his enthusiasm for the arts, you will easily imagine the delight he experienced in the excursion I have been describing, and it gave me singular pleasure, to see the striking improvement in his health, arising from the relaxation of the mind. He returned to his work with renewed strength, but unfortunately many years did not pass over his head, before he was again obliged to seek a more genial climate than we enjoy. When I took leave of him a week before he sailed for the West Indies, it was too clear that he would leave his bones there. If he had had health and strength to have pursued his business, he would, in all probability, have risen to great eminence. There are several private residences in this neighbourhood built from his designs, all different in character, but all shewing great taste, and excellent in their arrangement.

Excuse my having written to you so much in detail, but as you have taken an interest in the reputation of our departed friend, I thought I would tell you what I knew about the roof of St. George's Hall.

WILLIAM TITE, ESQ., M.P. &c.

42, Lowndes Square.

Believe me, dear Sir,

Your's very truly,

WILLIAM EARLE.

OPENING ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT,

At the Ordinary General Meeting of the Royal Institute of British Architects, November 2nd, 1863.

GENTLEMEN,-Even within the few months, which have passed since we met in this room, several events have occurred interesting to us as a body, interesting to us all individually. I shall therefore trespass upon your patience for a short time, as I pass in review some of the more important topics connected with our Profession.

In the first place it is due to a great man, who has recently passed away from us, to notice the death of our distinguished Fellow, C. R. COCKERELL, R.A., our first Professional President, and the first member whom you honored by your choice, in the award of the Royal Gold Medal. It is not for me to anticipate, what we may ere long hope to hear read at one of our meetings, a full and complete memoir of our departed Friend. Nor shall I repeat what has already been aptly said of him in various journals. But perhaps I may be allowed shortly to notice somewhat of my own personal impressions during an intimacy, and I am proud to say a friendship, of above forty years standing. Mr. Cockerell's earliest professional experience was under Mr., now Sir Robert, Smirke, in whose office he was during the few months in which the late Covent Garden Theatre was being built. Here he had the most favorable opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of Architecture, as that building was considered at the time a masterpiece of conception and execution in its structural details; and his taste must have been refined by the elegant and chaste artistic decorations of the interior, which were a theme of admiration to all lovers of the art. He then proceeded on his professional travels through Italy, Greece, and Turkey, preceding me by some years; but the remembrance of him was still fresh in the memory of many friends I made there, and his praise was the constant theme of all. His handsome person, his clear blue eye, his pleasing expression, and graceful manner, a taste the most refined, a varied and extensive knowledge of Art, his free and masterly style of drawing, his genial generous disposition, irresistibly won general admiration, and he was considered the type of a polished and gifted Architect. His presence in Greece threw him entirely into the society of foreigners desirous to win his friendship, and he as anxious, with a modest consciousness of deficiencies yet to be supplied, to avail himself of their experience, their researches and their superior attainments. He was most fortunate in being thrown among such men as Barons Haller and Von Stackelberg, and Herr Link. The first especially was a very advanced Architect, a ripe scholar, perfectly master of Greek art,-and through his counsels Cockerell acquired a deep insight into that peculiar and spiritual mystery of power on the mind, which reigns in the ancient monuments of that classic soil. With these earnest companions, who fathomed the inner soul of every monument of that refined people, he studied, and measured, and drew, and reasoned, and reflected, with joy and love for the subject, and with the patience and fire, which kindled emulation in the whole group. You may well imagine how they investigated the hidden secrets of those historical monuments, connected with the earliest associations of their boyish studies, and with the renown of the heroes and poets, writers and artists, rulers and sages of the classic times. The very soil was sacred to them. Each grove, each rivulet, each mountain and each valley, had its power over their minds, and under that bright sky pursuing their studies, amid such scenes, and in the presence of such inspiriting monuments, you must allow with me, that it must have been the poetry of their existence. They also associated with Gropius the Austrian Consul, and Fauvel the Consul of France, and Lusieri, whose laborious and vivid pencil drew those exquisite views of the Buildings of Greece preserved in Lord Elgin's Collection.

B

The two Consuls had galleries of choice antiquities, and a quick perception and knowledge of Greek art. Mons. Fauvel especially was endowed with a natural instinct and brilliant fancy peculiarly valuable to the student, qualities rendered more precious still by frank candour and generosity of disposition.

And here I would notice, by the bye, the advantage which the English artist acquires by mixing with his foreign brethren in art. He soon discovers that they see with other eyes and under different impressions the same objects-their mode of appreciation has another rule.-They may perceive beauties or defects, where he finds the reverse. At first he may feel dissatisfied with their judgments, and may think them crude and defective; but when once he can reason with them, and learn their grounds of approval or dislike, he will find that it may not be without some shew of reason, that they may have arrived at conclusions different from his own. They may be right or may be wrong; but he becomes conscious that perhaps he may be biassed, too often by prejudice and by a judgment formed in the school in which he may have been trained, and by the one groove of thought in which the mind may have been accustomed to move, and which may have induced the adoption of ideas, requiring re-consideration and re-modelling ere he can arrive at truth. And he, who is once induced to doubt his own judgment and to reason frankly, is in a fair way of getting at the truth-for his ideas are enlarged, and he is freed from the trammels of bigoted notions as to art. Thus fifty years ago, ere our intercourse was opened with the Continent by the peace of 1816, Medieval art was called English architecture, it being supposed to have originated in this country and carried to its climax of beauty here: but soon our intercourse with the Continent induced a healthier judgment. Perhaps I may be permitted to add, that Mr. Cockerell and myself have found among our Foreign Brother Artists a readiness to accept our friendship, a liberal and frank interchange of thought, a courteous willingness to supply any information we might require, and to open to us their portfolios or lend us their drawings; in fact, to an interchange of all the social and artistic courtesies of life. And, I am happy to say, that these feelings cannot but be confirmed, if not increased, by the manner in which this Institute has enrolled so many Foreign Architects among its Honorary Members, and sought, by the liberal award of the Royal gold medal to several Foreign men of distinguished merit, to draw closer still the bonds, which should unite in one common accord the Profession throughout the World.

It is from the combination of these circumstances, the association and congenial studies with foreigners, and a readiness to entertain the ideas of others, as also from his ability, when thus enlightened, to acquaint himself with the monuments of antiquity, in fact to acquire a thorough knowledge of the whole range of the sister arts, that Mr. Cockerell was able throughout his career, to advance with the new laws of art brought to light by the researches of successive travellers; to appreciate the fulness of the polychromatic theory; and to hail with generous delight the discoveries and minute investigations in the Parthenon of his friend and successor Mr. Penrose. It is not to be supposed that he needed the counsels and support of his fellow travellers in the whole course of his studies. The delightful illustrations, which he made for the pleasing volume of Beaufort's Karamania, shew how completely he entered into the gorgeous magnificence of the Greco-Roman antiquities of those splendid cities, along the South Coast of Asia Minor. In Sicily also, where our common friend, Raffaelle Politi, who still survives and is one of our Honorary and Corresponding Members, had made the excavations of the Temple of Jupiter at Agrigentum, he composed that fine restoration of the section with the colossal caryatide to the clerestory of the Cella, which I prevailed upon him to publish in the Supplementary Volume of Stuart's Athens. In his beautiful drawings of the Buildings at Pompeii, he displayed with graphic skill the peculiar sentiment and grace of the architecture, sculpture and decorative painting, and revived as it were the domestic life of the Pompeians, with as much facility as he rendered the existing realities of Ali Pasha's Audience Hall at Yanina.

OPENING ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT.

Throughout his whole life architecture was to Mr. Cockerell what Coleridge describes poetry to have been to himself" Poetry," he said, "has been to me an exceeding great reward. It has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude and has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." So was architecture Cockerell's passion and delight-he followed it not from mere mercenary considerations. He spared not himself to revise, correct and chasten each vivid idea as it presented itself to his fancy, and which he appropriated to his work on hand; he was never weary if he could improve, and anxious for novelty he occasionally transgressed the severe principles of the Antique. In fact, if fault could be attributed to a man of such genius, he was, perhaps, often too fastidious, and occasionally ready to retouch and to adopt a supposed improvement, where possibly the original thought was simplerwiser. In him the young architect found an encouraging monitor, and one of kindred feeling; ever ready to assist and to discover latent talent. And perhaps one of the most remarkable traits in his character was, that, with all his prepossession for the chaste and simple sublimity of Greek art, he could bow, as before a superior and supreme spirit, to the genius of Wren, whose noble productions are at such variance with the supposed canons of antiquity.

It is a circumstance to be remarked that Mr. Cockerell did not join this Institute as a Member till 1849, that is fifteen years after its foundation. This did not arise from any want of interest in its success; on the contrary, he considered it as most honorable and useful to the profession. But he thought himself bound in honor and by the laws as a member of the Royal Academy not to belong to any other artistic body. Sir Robert Smirke had from the first joined us, but it was as Honorary Fellow. When Mr. Barry, however, then a Fellow of our Institute, was elected a Royal Academician, and did not cease to be a Fellow of our Institute, he felt himself released from the supposed obligation, and at once sent in his allegiance and became a Fellow. I shall not occupy your time further on this interesting topic by analysing the productions of our late friend, his works are before the world, and you are competent to form a judgment yourselves: besides which such a review would require longer deliberation, and that will be given in the more complete biography which is now preparing.

He has been to us an example, while living, as a man of the highest honor, intense sensibility, generous sentiment, refined taste, and deep knowledge of architecture: and may the memory of such noble qualities have its influence upon every generation of his successors, whatever theory they may entertain, whatever style of art they may pursue.

There is still one other consideration connected with the memory of our departed friend. With the gracious concurrence of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, we buried him with the noble and great of the land. Whatever may be the strivings and antagonisms or even jealousies of practical life, as architects we must all feel a just pride in the reflexion, that we have our Barry in Westminster Abbey and our Cockerell in St. Paul's.

Mr. JOSEPH GWILT is another of our Professional Brethren, who has died during our vacation. He was a man of superior attainments, as a classical scholar, mathematician, musician, and astronomer, besides his acquirements as an architect. In his earlier professional life he adopted the prevailing passion for Greek art; and here we must not confound real Greek art with its many applications at that time in this country. You may apply the general proportions, the decorations and details of a style, in all the minutest accuracy to any particular building, but unless you adopt also the appropriateness, the fitting sentiment and destination of the original, and produce the same impression and convey the same idea, it becomes senseless imitation, and of course devoid of its proper sentiment. Thus the Greek Doric in its noble proportions was travestied, and that which in a Heathen Temple assumed the impressiveness of a consecrated tradition, proved when rigidly applied to a Christian place of worship or a theatre

devoid of propriety and instinctive life. Not that there is one only religious architecture, for there is no style incapable of producing religious impression, and therefore no style can be called profane. The Romans, when they adopted the Greek canons for their buildings, did that with a liberty and grace, which imparted to them individuality of sentiment. The triumphal arches, and the monumental columns and amphitheatres, are evidences of their power of a proper transfusion of feeling to other purposes of existing forms. When the Italians and French in like manner revived the taste of Classic Architecture, they also modified it and imparted to it the charm of an individuality neither precisely Greek nor Roman, as that of the Cinque Cento and Renaissance period, which drew a broad line of demarcation between the type and its free imitations. Hence it is that Greek Art in this country, not having been studied and applied with the like views and similar sensible treatment, failed to maintain the position it acquired under its earliest cultivators, and a noble opportunity was lost of falling back upon the manly, chaste and profound laws in art of the most refined people who had ever existed, and the full and judicious application of which we can never know, for almost all but the Temples of Greece have been destroyed for ages, and we have few records of their other monuments left behind.

Mr. G. Tappen who had been travelling in Italy, and who brought home a portfolio rich in the studies of Italian buildings, and the fruits of which he published, returned with a deep admiration of the works of Palladio and his compeers. He imbued Mr. Gwilt with the like feelings, so that henceforth his style was formed on that of the Italian schools with Vignola at their head, and of this predilection a notable instance occurs in the buildings he erected for the Grocers' Company, in Princes Street, opposite the Bank of England.

He was a prolific writer, his works being distinguished rather for diligent research and as useful compilations, than for originality of information or remark. His translation of Vitruvius was a faithful rendering of the received text of the Roman; it is to be regretted that he did not fall back upon the original codices for which his classical attainments peculiarly qualified him, as well as his laborious patience for such researches; or did not adopt Schneider's masterly and expurgated edition of the great master he accepted the corrupt readings of Jocundus and his followers down to Galliani. The plates are most carefully engraved, but the illustrations do not reflect the majesty of Roman art. His architectural notes upon the buildings of Italy are a very useful compendium for the traveller and student. But his great work was the Encyclopædia of Architecture, containing much practical information, well compiled from various authors. He was consulted by the official department of the Government in re-modelling on the two last occasions the Building Acts of 1843 and 1854. He removed many inconsistencies in the old enactments, and he sought to simplify the regulations by some curious abstract theories superseding useful working data, which are much more easily understood by the practical man. He was a member of this Institute at the first, when his adhesion was very influential, and he assisted materially by his experience and business methodical habit of mind, in drawing up its original constitution: unfortunately some difference of opinion of no very great moment arose, and suddenly broke off the connection. I am happy to learn that his Memoir, written by his Son, Mr. John Sebastian Gwilt, will be read at one of our early Ordinary Meetings.

One of the most important proceedings of this Institute has occurred during the late recess of the ordinary operations of our body. I allude to the prompt and vigorous measures adopted in order to prove to Parliament and to the British Public the impolicy of preserving the Exhibition Building of 1862. As soon as notice was given in the House of Commons, that it was the intention of Government to apply for funds to purchase the Building, and for laying out a still larger sum in order to render it adequate for the purpose of a National Museum for the reception of the natural history division of the British Museum, a meeting was called for by some of the Fellows, and the Council convened, as you