animals, and that the rule of irregularity prevails in the proportions of the picturesque is seen in the branches of trees, the edges of rocks, &c. For this reason, any architecture essentially picturesque in its character may be more capricious in its proportions, without detraction to its merit as excellent art, although in such a case the fundamental effects of proportion should be known and kept in mind.

The proportions of window openings and interspaces, of openings and their architraves, are not to be set out invariably on the dicta of any men. The first especially must in practice materially depend upon necessity, and moreover it may be remarked that even where windows have only the same space as themselves between them, the same idea of breadth and strength which more than double their width between them gives, may be gained by extra height between their heads and the cills of the next floor openings, and though we owe much to the investigators on proportion as to the effect of inter widths, we have no data, if I remember right, about inter heights, which, for a noble appearance in a building, should be as great as is usually possible. As to the proportion of architraves being not less than a sixth or more than a fifth of the void, it is difficult to conceive on what grounds it is asserted. Many most excellent openings, even in Italian architecture, are more; the gate of Ghiberti, at Florence, for instance. In other styles it would be useless to particularise what should be the general rule.

Not that from this it is to be inferred that in Classical art these rules of proportion can be harmlessly played with by every one. Rules of whatever kind are most valuable, when not meant to repress design, and as a starting point from which we may see how we can effect improvement, indeed though they have had the effect of making architecture a commonplace business, executed by commonplace men, yet to one who has been tossed about in the uncertainty of original design, they are like terra firma to his unsteady footing; these rules of proportion especially are most difficult and most valuable, and that they have been departed from at times with great success is no depreciation of their use for the ordinary practitioner; those deviations were effected by men of great genius guided by study.

Variety of proportion is however necessary, but the difference will in ordinary buildings be of so slight a nature as to be unperceived by the public, and can be easily ascertained by taking the double square in voids for the standard proportion, and so on in other fixed proportions. That the proportion must needs vary, may be inferred from the fact that a balustrade near the ground and a balustrade over the cornice ought not to be the same; that a column perfect as a ground support would require an alteration when placed on a basement, and that the Doric columns of ancient Greece are not quite fitted for a balustrade, without alteration, as I have often seen them. The necessity for this difference of proportion in one subject is well shewn by the different heights of the three orders.

An acute investigator of the principles of art, (Harding), has asserted that irregularity of proportion is the cause of beauty in architecture, and has brought forward a Grecian cornice as a proof, but he has been misled by the seeming irregularity of a portion of a whole-and however varied a cornice may be in its inferior divisions, yet it bears a regular proportion to the whole mass and to each individual member of that mass, founded on a scale taken from the diameter of the base of the support or column, to which all the subjects of the composition, dado, base, shaft, capital, and entablature, are referable in regular quantities

there are other examples given, but none so apparently confirmatory as this of a very dangerous error, viz., that irregularity is productive of beauty; were this the case the most confused forms would be the most beautiful: irregularity means without rule, and is only applicable to the picturesque.

FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUND.

Everything is enhanced or lessened in value by its concomitants," setting off," to use a common expression, is much neglected, often entirely disregarded, and yet is a matter of much import. The toll of the cathedral bell heard by night in some deep and gloomy valley, sounds awfully and warningly, and has a terror in its measured solemnity; yet the same sound heard in the sunny cloisters where the wild weeds grow and the lizard has no fear,

becomes tranquillizing and melancholy, and as you rest in some retired nook and catch the sweet voices of the choristers and the pealing of the organ in harmony with the rustling of the green leaves, you enjoy a holy pleasure which the same strain could never impart in the crowded hall though executed by the most celebrated artists.

The character of everything changes with the character which surrounds or accompanies it. Westminster Cathedral has never been a Gothic cathedral to me,-even at night the distant roar of the troubled world destroys that feeling of serene and perfect quiet which seem to shadow forth the quiet of Heaven; this cathedral has never seemed to me to belong to modern London, but rather to be the valued, venerable, and glorious relic of a past state of society, a past creed, and a past age, to which we of the present day bear but a slight affinity.

In architecture this setting off, is gained by the foreground and background; every building to form itself into a perfect picture must have these, and it seems to me a great error even in the largest buildings to suppose that they contain these advantages in themselves. Such buildings as Whitehall, or the Library of St. Mark's, Venice, the Farnese, &c., have evidently no claim to such an arrangement, nor has an ancient Grecian temple, yet they are considered perfect works of art in all respects; in these and in all buildings, the work itself does in reality form the principal composition, to which the surrounding buildings and figures, or nature, forms the foreground, and the surrounding distance and sky, the background; that this is the case is allowed by painters, and is the method of their making architectural pictures. How well does the irregularity of Gothic outline harmonise with the jagged clouds of a northern sky, with the sharpness and action of our climate, and how well does the calm beauty of a Grecian temple agree with the unclouded expanse of its bright blue atmosphere, with the repose of a climate where days and nights glide on equally serene, and equally beautiful; there is more in this analogy of character perhaps than we are apt to believe: extending even to the costume of the people who move around us, and which makes the modern European's dress seem ludicrously out of place among the ruins of ancient Egypt.

A neglect of the necessary accompaniments of a new building, or a want of good taste, arising from a love of novelty or a blind admiration for some particular style, too often leads to the greatest anomalies in this respect, and many buildings, excellent in themselves, are so placed as to seem dropped by accident from some other world; this is a complaint under which we suffer, which has no cure but time, but if we work up to the principle before expressed, we shall avoid over irregularity in a large city whose size and grandeur demands a certain degree of simplicity and massiveness, and keep our more fanciful ideas for their picturesque and rural attributes, rocks, trees, clouds, and running waters, and be likewise sure that the picturesqueness of a castellated building on the Rhine, rock mounted and surrounded, is not the picturesqueness which is fitted to a castle situated amid quiet lawns and well-trimmed gardens.

That this principle should be advocated is the more necessary, from the fact that those high in authority whose influence the student feels, so often expressly denounce anything but the study of the actual building in considering a design, and have by this unsound teaching left the breach open by which we are flooded with imitations of all the styles of antiquity, without regard to their situation, and have given ground for belief that all buildings possess that advantage in themselves, which even St. Peter's or St. Paul's but slightly attain to.

In making the rough sketch of an intended building, it should be done from various points and always in relation to the objects around it; this having been once satisfactorily made out, the building may then be a study of itself; had this been done we might have avoided having consecutive buildings in the most widely separated and unharmonising styles-disagreeable only from their juxtaposition-moreover wherever great projections occur, the visual ray should be projected from the ordinary point of sight, and all ornament avoided within the angle it covers; from want of due reflection I have seen many instances of rich work being lost; it is better even to exaggerate the inclination of the visual ray, than to put in ornament as though the building could ever be seen in geometrical elevation.

THE SUBLIME AND THE PICTURESQUE.

So many have written on Beauty, and it is such a vexed question, that I shall not treat further of it, but there is one quality so important and generally so cavalierly treated, that I must say more about; that quality is picturesqueness. This is a very general expression, indeed of European use, and calls to my mind the works of Salvator Rosa, icebergs, rocks, ruins, withered trees, things jagged, irregular, angular.

Now I think it can be shewn that this quality bears more affinity to the sublime than to the beautiful, and frequently forms an important attribute of it.

The ancient Greeks were masters of the beautiful, they perfected it up to now, in itself purely and in all its varieties; in their most majestic effects there is little if anything of that undefined terror which is justly held to be one of the essentials of the sublime. Repose is the pervading idea of all their noblest statues, the Hercules, the Saturn, the Olympian Jove, the River Gods at the Vatican, the Theseus, the Illyssus, and more strangely still, in the Laocoon. The very dæmons of the race were benevolent; terror was a quality of which they seem to have had no national comprehension, and considering this as essential to sublimity, I can fix on no work of theirs which perfectly produces that quality, and the same occurs as regards the picturesque, not that they never touched on the two, for the Theseus, Illyssus, and Laocoon possess certainly sublime features, and the drunken Fawn, Cymbal Player, and many of their rural gods and dæmons, are picturesque; but in both cases it is a mixed quality, combined with the beautiful which is generally predominant. To find these characters more perfectly exemplified we must turn to a later race, and a later method of expression. How intimately the two are connected may be seen in Schiller's poem of the Diver. The group above, the Diver himself, the site, a rocky promontory, are unmistakeably picturesque, whilst the scene in the whirlpool itself is full of mysterious terror and is essentially sublime, the two forming one perfect composition to the imagination. In Shelley's "Alastor," we have the same excellent combination of the two qualities:

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