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Article OUR ARCHITECTURAL CHAPTER. Page 1 of 4 →
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Our Architectural Chapter.
OUR ARCHITECTURAL CHAPTER .
The warfare between the mediaeval and the classic party becomes close and warm ; the classic troops can no longer parade in their own garrisons with the quiet determination of holding their own , for the mediaevalists skirmish with them wherever they meet . The Institute of British
Architects has become regular border ground ; the Royal Academy has an outpost in it under George Gilbert Scott ; the Architectural Museum is strongly fortified for the medievalists Mr . Ruskin and his colleagues enter the Schools of Design propagating medisevalist doctrines . The classicists make but a poor fight of it , for the votaries of the renaissance , being treated as heretics , afford ho ^^ ^
are m imminent danger in these days . Assuredly these are no times for Soane or Smirke , and although Chambers ' s Somerset House has been completed by Mr . Pennethorne and a great ovation conceded to the latter , yet there is a touch of modernism in it . As to the British Museum , its reconstruction is as certain as Soane's Treasury or his College of Surgeons , Sydney Smirke doing for his brother the work of oblivion , which Barry has performed for Soane ; and even the General Post Qfiice has signs of
transformation upon it . The classic hall of the latter has been touched by profane hands , utilitarian at first , but when veneration for this supposed classic model is once shaken , it is not hard to foretell its lot . If it remains a General Post Office , and is not consigned to a general railway station , then it will be marvellously transformed . The British Museum is being gradually attacked from within and without . The tympanum of the
portico with a blue background and gilt details of the sculpture , would have made Sir Robert Smirke blush through his coat of whitewash , the main staircase and the decorated ceilings he would look upon with dread , and the domed library swallows up his great quadrangle , where the architect sacrificed to symmetry , but wdiere his incense was wafted to vacancy . Another plea for extension , and Sir Robert ' s British Museum will be as little visible as old Montague House .
The fate of the old classic is sealed , but the believers in it still make resistance , though Italian and renaissance are the only vital branches of the dynasty . The advocates of these take the less part in the fight , because they are contented with their share of the empire of architecture . The medievalists , however , aim at an entire reconcpiest , and the restitution of the ancient regime of early English , and everywhere put forward their claims . At the last conversazione of the Architectural Association ,
Professor Cockerell , when called upon , while attesting the rights of Greek art , which he styled the beautiful , tendered the concession of the sublime to the mediaeval , and to the revival the title of the poetical , the fanciful , and the luxurious . This was insufficient for Alexander Beresford Hope . He forthwith put in a protest for the supremacy and infallibility of what he called the Teutonic Christian notion , which he contended was the best
starting point of architecture for the future . Mr . Wigley , the chairman , backed Mr . Hope , and went the length of saying that while lie acknowledged the eminence the Greeks attained in beauty , yet in the Greek there was only a limited perfection so to speak , however philosophical their society was , and he consequently assumed that what he denominated Christian art was the development of Christian society and Christian perfection in eighteen hundred years .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Our Architectural Chapter.
OUR ARCHITECTURAL CHAPTER .
The warfare between the mediaeval and the classic party becomes close and warm ; the classic troops can no longer parade in their own garrisons with the quiet determination of holding their own , for the mediaevalists skirmish with them wherever they meet . The Institute of British
Architects has become regular border ground ; the Royal Academy has an outpost in it under George Gilbert Scott ; the Architectural Museum is strongly fortified for the medievalists Mr . Ruskin and his colleagues enter the Schools of Design propagating medisevalist doctrines . The classicists make but a poor fight of it , for the votaries of the renaissance , being treated as heretics , afford ho ^^ ^
are m imminent danger in these days . Assuredly these are no times for Soane or Smirke , and although Chambers ' s Somerset House has been completed by Mr . Pennethorne and a great ovation conceded to the latter , yet there is a touch of modernism in it . As to the British Museum , its reconstruction is as certain as Soane's Treasury or his College of Surgeons , Sydney Smirke doing for his brother the work of oblivion , which Barry has performed for Soane ; and even the General Post Qfiice has signs of
transformation upon it . The classic hall of the latter has been touched by profane hands , utilitarian at first , but when veneration for this supposed classic model is once shaken , it is not hard to foretell its lot . If it remains a General Post Office , and is not consigned to a general railway station , then it will be marvellously transformed . The British Museum is being gradually attacked from within and without . The tympanum of the
portico with a blue background and gilt details of the sculpture , would have made Sir Robert Smirke blush through his coat of whitewash , the main staircase and the decorated ceilings he would look upon with dread , and the domed library swallows up his great quadrangle , where the architect sacrificed to symmetry , but wdiere his incense was wafted to vacancy . Another plea for extension , and Sir Robert ' s British Museum will be as little visible as old Montague House .
The fate of the old classic is sealed , but the believers in it still make resistance , though Italian and renaissance are the only vital branches of the dynasty . The advocates of these take the less part in the fight , because they are contented with their share of the empire of architecture . The medievalists , however , aim at an entire reconcpiest , and the restitution of the ancient regime of early English , and everywhere put forward their claims . At the last conversazione of the Architectural Association ,
Professor Cockerell , when called upon , while attesting the rights of Greek art , which he styled the beautiful , tendered the concession of the sublime to the mediaeval , and to the revival the title of the poetical , the fanciful , and the luxurious . This was insufficient for Alexander Beresford Hope . He forthwith put in a protest for the supremacy and infallibility of what he called the Teutonic Christian notion , which he contended was the best
starting point of architecture for the future . Mr . Wigley , the chairman , backed Mr . Hope , and went the length of saying that while lie acknowledged the eminence the Greeks attained in beauty , yet in the Greek there was only a limited perfection so to speak , however philosophical their society was , and he consequently assumed that what he denominated Christian art was the development of Christian society and Christian perfection in eighteen hundred years .