sue his observations, commenced a short time before 1781, in which year he discovered the planet Uranus in 1802, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions his catalogue of 500 new nebula and nebulous stars; in 1803 his announcement of the motions of double stars around each other; and a long succession of other important papers, illustrative of the construction of the heavens, followed down to within a few years of his death, at the age of eighty-four, in 1822. In chemistry, Davy, who had published his account of the effects produced

SIR II. DAVY.

by the respiration of nitrous oxide (the laughing gas) in 1800, in 1807 extracted their metallic bases from the fixed alkalis, in 1808 demonstrated the similar decomposibility of the alkaline earths, in 1811 detected the true nature of chlorine (oxymuriatic acid), and in 1815 invented his safety lamp; in 1804 Leslie published his Experimental Enquiry into the Nature and Properties of Heat; in 1808 the Atomic Theory was announced by Dalton, and in 1814 its developement and illustration were completed by Wollaston, to whom both chemical science and optics are also indebted for various other valuable services.

The period now under consideration is so limited, and so much which properly belongs to its history as regards the Fine Arts has necessarily been anticipated in the last Book, that our notice of this subject must be short, and in some particulars incomplete.

The first years of the nineteenth century were eminently unfavourable to Architecture. Neither the attention nor the resources of a government ever backward in the active encouragement of the arts was likely to be extended to them at this great political crisis. The erection of public buildings was for a time almost suspended, and there was little hope that the retrograde movement in architecture which marks the former portion of the reign of George III.* would change its course,

See ante, vol. iii., p. 731.

at a moment when the last professors of a legitimate school had disappeared from the world, and the rising generation were shut out from the pursuit of knowledge in those classic regions from whence alone fresh and healthy inspirations of art can be drawn.

At the beginning of the present period the diffusion of a taste for the Greek style had imparted a new character to art throughout Europe, and, paradoxical as it may appear, its influence, in at least two instances, was for a time decidedly pernicious. If painting in France and architecture in England received an impulsion from the study of Greek art, it was speedily checked by the false views and principles by which it was accompanied. In both cases the arts were in a state which called loudly for reformation: iu both, Greek art was assumed as the basis of a new style: in neither was the right path pursued which should have led to success. In France the mechanical David, supported in the public esteem by the irresistible fascination of his political character, established, for a quarter of a century, a school which seems to have aimed at reducing the whole art of historical painting to an imitation of basso-relievo and the figures on Greek vases; and something closely analogous may be found in the compilations of the English school of architecture during the same period.

In a former Book the last professors of the Italian school of architecture in England were traced from the immediate successors of Lord Burlington down to Sir William Chambers; and, if during the last twenty years of the reign of George III. there yet remained any descendants of this school capable of developing an architectural composition in a sound Italian style, they are not to be found among those who occupied the principal share of public consideration and patronage. The exquisite refinement of Greek art, as it had been revealed by the great work of Athenian Stuart, and the other researches and publications to which it had given rise, had suddenly affected the public mind in a manner which left little room for the exercise of the judgment, and Greek art was unfortunately adopted, not as a principle, but as a fashion. The reproduction of its forms was demanded without reference to the propriety of their application, or to the relations which essentially constitute the beauty of architecture. A system which reduced the art and science of architecture to the appropriation of ready-made temples, and dispensed with so much of the burden of study and thought-a-faith in art whose yoke was so easy-could scarcely fail to attract disciples; and Greek architecture (so called) came into existence in England in the most abortive shape in which the narrowest spirit of imitation could produce it.*

What the Romans did for the architecture of

As early as 1773 James Wyatt had used fluted Doric columns without bases in the Canterbury gate at Christchurch, Oxford; with what view, except as a popular novelty, it is difficult to imagine.

*

the Greeks, and what the great Italian masters did for that of the Romans, and might have done for the purer style had they been able to advert to itthe consistent and harmonious adaptation of the original elements to new combinations suggested by new institutions and habits,-are lessons which appear to have been all but universally overlooked in the revival of Greek architecture in England; and that much was accomplished in the right direction by one who had the courage to think for himself, and to bring to the undertaking the mind of an artist and the perseverance of an enthusiast, is a bitter reproach to those who have coldly repelled every opportunity of doing more. The early works of Sir John Soane and their general character have already been referred to. It was not until the Bank of England was placed in his hands that his ambition to be original appears to have been thoroughly awakened; but from that time he seems to have given himself to the study of new combinations in architecture, fitted to modern exigencies, and adapted to the spirit and character of the Greek style; with what success will be testified to generations to come in that vast pile of building which occupied the remainder of his life, either in enlarging its boundaries or replacing the work of his predecessors. The result of this great labour is described by an eminent French architect † as "a work admirable for solidity and grandeur, elegance of detail, decoration rich without excess, and a harmony which attests the talent and judgment of the architect."..." Vast halls," continues this critic," spacious courts of different forms and dimensions, present the most picturesque and varied effects. There are several See ante, vol. iii., p. 739.

+ M. Hittorf.

domed apartments of the most noble simplicity, and both the eye and the judgment are struck with the ingenuity of the means employed for the distribution of light. The effects produced by these means, and by proportions adapted to the localities, and to the characteristics of the architecture, are often marvellous."

*

It might convey much instruction to those who refer proficiency in art to the spontaneous inspiration of genius, to examine the process by which such results have been achieved. It was not without severe study that Soane developed his style, nor without long experience that he wrought it up to consistency, nor without extreme caution that he resolved to apply it to a great public work. It was not for some years after his appointment to the Bank that he commenced his operations on the exterior, and the first of a progressive series of designs for the north side exhibits a timid composition garnished with Greek Doric columns, without a trace of the character of the existing building. As little of the peculiarities which he afterwards so freely introduced into his street architecture is to be seen in Buckingham House, Pall Mall, built in 1790. His treatment of interior decoration was developed sooner; and in the old vestibule † to the Rotunda at the Bank, the first part of his great work actually executed, nothing remains of the meagre style of ornament which, in his early works, he had shared with his contemporaries. The designs for the Lothbury Court were made in 1797, and in 1805 he executed the north-west corner of the edifice, in which he seems to have realised to its fullest extent his own

Preserved in the Soane Museum. † Now part of the Treasury.

ditions of the edifice, which appears in some modern porticoes of an earlier date, deeply condemned by artists of this school for want of "purity." At Hayleybury College, as the monotonous length of wall is too great to be relieved by one portico, Wilkins has given us three; and, with a little inconsistency, the principal and most conspicuous has no door within it. In the design for Downing College, at Cambridge (only partially executed), five Greek porticoes are grouped together, and the most elaborately ornamented example of the Ionic order is associated with ranges of windows destitute even of an architrave. Even in his villas and country-houses the one idea, the inexorable Greek portico, is the unfailing feature. Upon Wilkins's later works it does not come within our province to remark; but it may be observed, that in the National Gallery he has found himself under the

necessity of departing widely from his established notions, without being able to substitute anything of value in their place. Wilkins died in 1839. He was a man of the highest attainments and accomplishments, and seems to have been qualified to shine in any pursuit connected with the liberal sciences, rather than that which he adopted; but he derived an extensive employment from his authority as a scholar and a critic; and, little as he may have done to secure the applause of posterity, he holds an important place among the architects of his day. Covent Garden Theatre, erected in the Greek style in 1809, was the first public work of Sir Robert Smirke, who so rapidly attained the eminence which he has long occupied that in 1815 he was associated with Soane and Nash, both greatly his seniors, in the Board of Works. The works of this architect are far more numerous than those

of any of his contemporaries; and it must suffice to enumerate, as examples of various classes of buildings, the Mint, the Library and other new rooms at the British Museum, the Post-Office, the church in Wyndham Place, the College of Physicians, the Union, Junior United Service, and Carlton club-houses, the law courts at Gloucester, and Lowther Castle.

It is unnecessary to pursue the subject of the Anglo-Greek school of architecture further than to observe, that the great majority of the edifices which it may claim for its own are in a style apart from either the originality of Soane or the academical system of Wilkins, a consequence which arises out of the summary process of applying the Greek orders and detail to the old established modes of composition. Thus, in churches, we have the outlines of Gibbs; and in every other class of building, where a portico is dispensed with, the common-place of the Italian and French schools, from the best of the one to the worst of the other-from the base

ment and loggia of the Palladian villa to the dis proportioned frame of pilasters of the garden of the Palais Royal-but with Greek antæ substituted for pilasters, and the most dreary monotony in the details and decorations which can result from a perpetual repetition of the few component parts and ornaments to be found in Stuart's 'Athens,' or at second-hand in The Carpenter's Guide.' Whether the details which the Greeks adapted to the severe and uniform simplicity of outline which characterises their temples are sufficiently varied and flexible to amalgamate with modes of composition so totally different, is a question which does not seem to have been generally propounded in the reign of George III.

Contemporary with Soane and Wilkins was John Nash, an architect of a very different stamp from either, but who held for several years that ascendancy which royal patronage never fails to bestow. Nash inherited from Sir Robert Taylor, under whom he studied, an elegant taste in villa archi