show so largely and distinctly what is real art and what mere imitative work. Let us now take leave of the professions, and see what the connoisseurs have done for our buildings. Some thirty years ago Trafalgar Square became the field for amateur dilettante diversions. The National Gallery had been declared a failure, though it would be difficult to find any work of this century that shows more refinement of feeling. The two four-column porticos are gems in their way. Still it may be conceded that the unfortunate conditions imposed on the architect had compelled an unsatisfactory result. A committee was then appointed to decide upon the arrangements of the Square, and the Gallery being low in elevation, it was sagaciously determined to deprive it of the rising ground above which it was fortunately placed, to sink a large pit, build a high retaining wall, with a balustrade above, and thus considerably reduce the apparent height of the façade. At each end of the balustrade an enormous block of masonry completely dwarfs the building, and on one of them is a colossal statue of a man and horse, that in a general view reaches to the cornice of the Gallery. Two large water-pans were placed in the pit, and lest the water should be too plainly seen, these pans were kept a foot or two above the level of the ground. To continue the gradation of increasing scale, the lamps have been considerately made fit for a lighthouse and their pedestals big enough for a statue. Then came the Nelson Column, with gigantic steps, and the big bas-reliefs in turn made these look dwarfish; and then the lions minimized the whole. This is the result of years of consideration by the combined talent and connoisseurship of the nation. It would probably be impossible to find on the face of the globe such a combination of ignorance, inexperience, absurdity, and bad taste.* The late Sir Robert Peel was a known patron of the arts, and a reputed connoisseur. We were assured by him that the new front of the British Museum was to be 'a masterpiece,' and we have an unconnected number of huge useless columns, a mere dull stoneyard. Were the front court enclosed with a comparatively * May we venture to suggest that the 'pit' of the square should be raised, with a slope to the upper edge of the water-pans; that the balustrade, pedestals and colossal statue, and lamp-posts should be cleared away; that a bank of grass and flowering shrubs should be formed on the north side of the square, and that the square itself should be planted with good forest trees. If the great fountains were removed, and a raised garden made in the centre of each basin, four small surrounding fountains would be far more pleasingly effective, with the verdant background, than the big jets can be with background of mean dingy buildings or of dirty sky. The great steps of the column also might be banked with grass or clothed with evergreens. plain stone wall and useful entrances and corridors, these cumbrous columns might be utilized within a spacious hall in area equal to the central dome, with all its adjuncts and annexes. This would be a valuable gain of greatly needed space, a saving of a hundred thousand pounds or more would be secured, all the now hidden marbles would have ample room, and the building would be visible above the gilded iron screen. We have endeavoured to describe the forlorn condition in which we are left in all that concerns our public as well as private building-works. We have neither artists to build, nor critics to discuss, nor a public worthy to approve of any work. A second competition for these Courts of Law would be but added folly, and a grievous waste of time and loss of temper. If Mr. Lowe and Mr. Ayrton would not be above some little study of the art of building, and, with memory of the errors we have shown, would bring their minds to the consideration of the details of the Law Courts' design, they might be able to help Mr. Street to such a new arrangement of his elevations as will satisfy the uninstructed but perhaps not altogether undiscerning public mind, and might start us once again in the genuine practice of builders' work. But for this end it should be absolutely settled that, whoever has the conduct of the work, should be the master workman, devoting his time entirely and exclusively to this one work, not a professional gentleman of large practice, just the worst person to be entrusted with a building. By all means let Mr. Street be employed, if he will comply with this condition. Let us in any case get rid of manufacturers of designs and competition speculators, with all their nonsense about marks and professional etiquette, and their following of drawing-clerks and decorators, whose petty conceits and impertinent meddling have defaced and degraded nearly every building, ancient or modern, in the land. We say nothing about salary; let that be all that is necessary, or more. But at whatever cost may be the substitute, if we are to have any more professionalism in our public buildings we richly deserve it. We have referred to the class of drawing-clerks without a compliment, but not without feelings of compassionate solicitude. These gentlemen, who are the architectural expectation, not to say hope, of the next generation, are in a desperately false position; they are, in fact, the real architects of the present. That the more fashionable members of the profession can properly consider, devise, and superintend the widely-scattered works on which they are engaged, is a perfectly inadmissible idea, and clearly demonstrates how really worthless the profession is. By far the greater portion of the work is designed as well as drawn by these clerks. clerks. It has been said that an eminent architect allows no drawing to leave his office without his inspection first received; but this places him just on a level with a reader for the press. He is not a poet or creator, but a mere checktaker or turnpikeman. The roles are, in fact, exchanged. The clerk is the architect, and the architect is the clerk of the cheque.' Nothing, then, could be of more advantage to the great body of architectural assistants than a complete change in the method of our building work. Instead of spending their lives in miserable drudgery and vain expectations, with minds enervated by dull routine, alternating with the excitement of the paltry jealousies of a precarious and speculative profession, they might themselves become the true successors of the ancient builders, and passing from a chronic state of anxiety, and disappointment, and despair, attain to a life of real work, true, grateful, ennobling, and refined. ART. II.-Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works. London, THE of a It is unquestionable that the greatness of a man is measured, partly by the range of his knowledge of truth, and partly by the resoluteness of his action on the truth which he knows. But there is no Englishman of the present day whose power appears, at first sight, so remote from those two sources of power as Mr. Carlyle. How, on the one hand, can vigorous practical action be attributed to a man whose life has been spent in writing, and in a kind of writing peculiarly devoid of that speciality and definite purpose which action demands? On the other hand, what system of theoretical knowledge can, even by an admirer, be attributed to Mr. Carlyle as its founder? What single point of scientific or historical fact has been originally discovered by him? What germinating principle has he hit upon that can colligate and embrace our isolated experiences in a grasp of such tenaciousness that succeeding inquirers may safely employ it in help of their own researches? Granted that he has popularized, made intelligible and picturesque, certain portions of history: it need not be said that Mr. Carlyle's fame and influence has greatly transcended that which any mere popularizer could obtain. There There are, accordingly, those at the present day who hold that Mr. Carlyle's influence has rested on illegitimate grounds; that it has been a deceitful phantasm, a will-o'-the-wisp, luring unstable minds into marshy and unprofitable places. A brilliant writer, a writer of genius, these are words which all will apply to Mr. Carlyle, for these are mere fine words, and do not guarantee any definite opinion on the part of those who utter them; but whether he writes that which is true, solid, and needful to be known, this is not on all sides accorded without dispute. This, then, is the point to which we must address ourselves. Can we, in Mr. Carlyle's works, lay bare any solid core, any framework of reality which remains when all the external appendages have been stripped off, and when it is set before the pure undazzled understanding to approve or reject? We hold that there is such; nor do we exclude even his later writings from this opinion, though assuredly it is no siccum lumen which streams from the pages of the Latter-day Pamphlets' and 'Shooting Niagara.' First, what is it that Mr. Carlyle has attempted to do? What is it that we have a right to expect from him? He is, above all things, a teacher, a moral and political teacher. He is, indeed, a historian as well; and one of his most remarkable qualities, his power of picturesque narrative, belongs to him solely as a historian. But still it is in the other aspect that he comes forward most prominently. Now the moral teacher is in a peculiar position. He stands almost precisely in the middle place between the man of action and the man of theory. No man, indeed, is entirely theoretical, no man entirely practical. Even the chemist and the astronomer, though their main office is theoretical, namely, a declaration of facts, yet by preference choose those facts out of their respective sciences which are most subservient to future utility, to future action. They have an eye for the practical, and therefore the title of practical men cannot be altogether refused to them. Again, the historian, though his main business is to narrate, is not indiscriminate in his selection of events and periods, but narrates those which seem to him most to touch on the needs of the day; so that he also has a partly practical aim. On the other hand, the statesman and mechanical engineer are chiefly practical, but they cannot help having a theoretical bias as well; if they do not accumulate knowledge, and a great deal of knowledge, moreover, for which they have no immediate use, they will be very narrow and feeble statesmen or mechanicians. And thus Watt had in him a great deal of the theorist: Thucydides had in him something of the practical man. But, on the whole, whole, there can be no doubt that the chemist, and astronomer, and historian, belong to the speculative class of men, the statesman and mechanician to the active class. The moral teacher, however, has at once and at the same time a knowledge to gain, and a work to perform; and he has not the one more than the other. He must know the right path of conduct; but he cannot know it unless he brings himself into it. He must teach others this right path; but he cannot teach them unless he brings them into it. A purely theoretical knowledge of virtue is no knowledge at all; the true knowledge of virtue is a flame that kindles into energy. To instruct men in goodness is, if the instruction takes effect, identical with making them good as well could a man know the pain of fire before he ever touched the flame as know the nature of goodness before he felt a good impulse. And thus those philosophers who make morality to consist in the calculation of consequences, in calculating for our happiness, lose the main element of it. They forget that we must have experienced feelings, before we can begin to calculate about those feelings; that unless we are animated and inspired by a virtuous energy to start with, it is perfectly vain to put forward such an energy, and the happiness attending it, as an end to be aimed at. The greatest moralists have therefore ever taught men to feel and to act, before teaching them to weigh and to calculate. Look at examples. Has Thomas à Kempis, or Bentham turned more men from a selfish to an unselfish life? Is it from his moral theories, or from his delineation of the pure and magnanimous character of Socrates, that Plato gains most power? This is the first eminent merit we discern in Mr. Carlyle. He has understood and embraced his function truly. With all his breadth of culture, he has never refined himself away into a simple intellectual thinker. He is all on fire, not merely to know what is right, but to have the right done. He ever refuses to confine himself to the office of a theorist. He appeals to the age, to his country, to the men about him, in strong and urgent entreaty: Do this; do not that.' When he treats of the men of his time, or of preceding times, he does not discuss merely whether they have held right opinions, but whether they have acted rightly. Voltaire, Diderot, Fichte-these, whom others carelessly think of as speculatists-Mr. Carlyle insists on dealing with as men. He knows what an effect a man's life has on his opinions; and hence he refuses to make any divorce between the two. In the midst of many changes that have come over him, this fundamental characteristic has remained. Hence, too, the simple, obvious nature of most of his precepts; |