not eclectics and scene-shifters; adroit hashers of stale heterogeneous dishes; or at the best mere able composers. The sufficiently familiar surname Smith may be regarded as having then been a right honourable one; for the smiths of that day were all artists, more or less. Architecture in its highest reachings, in its varying perfection of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, stayed with us, as but a beautiful dream. But it afterwards became more widely extended in its application, diverse in its adaptation. The leavings of ecclesiastical design were for a while beautifully used up; transposed in civil and domestic design, and for civil and domestic purposes. And this latter development too, whatever the ecclesiologists may think, was artistically characteristic of the advancing time; a fitting and genuine growth. For as the Church-as mere Churchwas losing in power, society and the Home were gaining. And this we may find beautifully expressed in the more elaborate and developed domestic architecture of the fifteenth century. And from this development, we of the present time may take a lesson. Now that art and thought no longer belong to the Church, but to the world, and that we Protestants, at least, do not sacrifice to God, or believe that we glorify him by gilding his altar, civil architecture must become the broader manifestation. Here, indeed, in some directions, might be realized, as the world shall progress, in the satisfaction of its varied highest needs, ample room for developments the most elevated, and comprehensively expressive.

Men have found it hard to account for the medieval eminence in the arts of architectural design, and all therewith connected. But certain sustaining influences being given-in that period not wanting-we, for our own part, find this eminence far readier of belief than its opposite. The debasement and nonentity of modern time, rightly considered, it is, alone, which on their front bear need of explanation and justification. Among a certain party of revivalists, more distinguished for their ecclesiastical fervour than their philosophic insight, there has been much talk of the influence of a specific religious faith on the old artists. Doubtless this influence existed, and practically operated to no insignificant extent. Beato Angelico, or the architect of Cologne Cathedral, found expression in their works for a ruling faith, and a sensuous and imaginative, as well as a deep and exalted faith. But undue stress has been laid on this one point. A religious faith alone will not make an artist. The Catholic faith is by no means the only one to assist to this end. It is forgotten the office of the high artist is ever in itself a deeply religious one. Current worldly rewards, current worldly acclamations, cannot content him; he will not work for, alone. Although, in any given direction of intellectual inquiry, a

spirit of investigation may, for a space, have been very energetic, and, among a certain limited class, much discourse may prevail about the results of the same, the general community may remain but comparatively little affected by all this. Thus it may become but too pressingly needful for some report of these results to be made to those of the latter class. And, in the present case, that the results attained should be not alone promulgated, but actively inculcated, is in the last degree essential. The current popular conceptions of Gothic architecture are at this present time by no means of a satisfactory order. This fact we find betrayed in literature. The old notion of Gothic wildness and irregularity, though by no means so rife as half a century since, still occupies the minds of cultivated men, as of many of refined, though imperfect taste. Such a simile as one in which the poet Campbell, not many years back, indulged, when speaking of Spenser's irregular Gothic tracery' as contrasted with Milton's precise classic forms, would scarcely, indeed, now escape from a littérateur. But great vagueness of allusion on the matter, springing from slight and imperfect knowledge, prevails. A novelist thinks it quite enough to call a window or an arch Gothic;' though, in perfect accordance with this designation, may be comprised windows and arches, in their architectural character, the most dissimilar or opposed. The need of provision in our schools and colleges of all denominations, for the facilitation of some knowledge of architecture, more especially Christian architecture, as of the fine arts generally, and the theory of the arts, has, in fact, long been apparent enough to a few. It is time the need should be more commonly apprehended. In the journals of the day, again, when indulging in architectural criticism, the lack of any certain intelligence on the matter is but too plainly evidenced in the loose, inconsequent, inconsistent character of the criticism. Even in a journal such as the Athenæum,' we have met with passages which, at the moment, made us mistrust whether they were not rather excerpta from 'Punch' which occupied its pages. As when, some time since, it was proposed to light the stained-glass windows of the new House of Lords during the hours of nightly sitting, from the exterior, through the means of some permanent lantern or other, as well as the interior, to bring out the colours! a most abominable suggestion; -or, more recently, to fit up the Nelson column with an assortment of candelabra!-or, again, with yet bolder contempt of common sense and decency, to transfer the proposed upper elevation of the Victoria tower, in its present position, the most Gothic and redeeming feature of the whole building, to a more central position in the general structure. No Chancellor of

the Exchequer, indeed, has been more considerately supplied with irrelevant suggestions than Mr. Barry. Were but half adopted, his building would present some remarkable appearances. An architect engaged in a conspicuous situation would seem to be regarded as the common property of all, in the way of gratuitous interference, and blundering doctoring. It is to be feared, under such treatment, exposed to so much of inadequate and contradictory criticism-the censure so seldom applied in the right place-architects cannot but be induced to condemn that public, which ought to have secured their respect. Even actual knowledge of art in its remaining developments by no means presupposes knowledge of or feeling for architectural art; as witness, in the last century, the miserable working, within our old churches, of Reynolds and West; to make way for whose irrelevant transparencies, how much beautiful pointed tracery was sacrificed. And, at the present day, notwithstanding distinguished and honourable exceptions, as from among the elder men, Etty, with the generality of practitioners of painting, lamentable ignorance and apathy prevail, in regard to this kindred and most august of all the arts.

The results of the investigations of scientific inquirers among us, such as Rickman, Whewell, Willis, and of the thoughtful expounders, such as Pugin, have, it cannot be too absolutely impressed upon the minds of all, gone to prove that Gothic architecture was in all regards a system, a deep, consistent, though spontaneous system of intelligent working; having inherent essential principles of life and action. Some of these, such as that of the prevailing verticality of lines-that of the apparent as well as actual sustainment of weights-that of the general display of artifices of construction, have been apprehended and determined. Of others, such as those regulating proportion, as well general as detailed, we are now essaying the unravelment. On the latter head, this much, however, is certain, the Gothic system was evidently not in any one, even subordinate regard, independent of proportion. Its scheme of proportion is simply of a more subtile order than that prevailing in the classic; and, in subordinate aspects, of a more flexible. In it, indeed, in its general proportions, and in its particular details, we have manifested to the fullest and most pregnant extent, that union of the two opposed, yet assimilative qualities, variety with uniformity, which belongs to all real construction, natural or artificial. As in a true sample of musical verse, so, in a true sample of Gothic architectural beauty and truth-the "frozen music" of Goethe,-uniformity prevails in variety, and the utmost specific variety amid the ruling uniformity.

The best, nay only sure key to a knowledge of the principles of Gothic architecture, is a knowledge of its history. Another, more suggestive study, the entire range of art will not offer. Here, amid the gradual development and progress of this beautiful, most consistent system of creative art: from the transmuted Greek and Roman of the early centuries of the Church, through the noble, but imperfect and contradictory Romanesque of those succeeding; through the commencement, in the twelfth century, of the Gothic itself as a developed scheme, to its perfection in the fourteenth; tracing, too, its setting glories in the fifteenth; with its ensuing total cessation-when architects and masons alike had lost the art of Gothic contrivance-a cessation, after every allowance for the new classic predilections of modern Europe, in its entireness and unreservedness remaining a startling mystery; here may be followed the growth and progress, and dissolution, of one of the grandest of the embodied developments of human genius. Aught in literature to compare with it, we know not, beside the development of the romantic drama itself: this latter development, indeed, from the very nature of the individual art to which it belongs, accomplished in briefer space; and in the case of the One greatest artist, with even more comprehensive fulness of manifestation. Some among the grander and sublimer efforts, efforts, however, often in general proportion more faulty, and in actual realization imperfect, the student of this history by its monuments, will find in Germany and northern France; some among those most generally satisfactory, and in specific execution, perfect, in our own land. English Gothic has not only a thoroughly marked individual character of its own, but an individual character of appropriate and ineffable beauty; a beauty in art, such as in nature, is that of our landscape, or of our women. Thus, in addition to its greater facility to an Englishman, the pursuit of the history as to be traced in existing English monuments alone, will be of peculiar interest and worth. And, notwithstanding the vast mass of beauty which, in the course of three centuries of apathy and Italian taste, has disappeared from us for ever, ample material for the study still remains. Our land is beautifully dotted over with such works of art; remains at once of antiquarian, associative, and architectural interest.

ART. IV.-Mary Barton; a Tale of Manchester Life. In Two Vols. 8vo. London: Chapman and Hall.

POLITICAL ECONOMY has laboured hard and long to solve the great problem of the misery of the manufacturing districts, without, in any remarkable degree, abating that misery. The vast masses of human beings who populate those districts are sunk in a destitution which has nothing beyond it, but the destitution of Ireland. The violent contrast of masters in palaces and men in cellars, of luxury in the few and frightful indigence in the many, are things that remain, spite of all philosophizing on the subject, and spite of all that Christianity can preach. There are few quarters of the globe where the gap between different classes of the community is so wide, so abrupt, and so startling. It is not a case of lords and serfs, with stolid, stupid, age-encrusted ignorance in the mass, and old, haughty, and unreflecting habits of domination in the handful of seignieurs, but of free and, in the main, most intelligent men:-of men, whether workers or employers, whether capitalists or paupers, who owe all that they enjoy or suffer to the same system. The masters, whatever their wealth, have, for the most part, sprung out of the labouring class. They know, or ought to know, what are the real conditions, feelings, and modes of reasoning, of the men. The men are not blind machines, but have long discussed the causes of their grievances with all the acuteness of logicians, and the sturdy discontent of Englishmen. They have murmured, and resisted too, times almost innumerable. Strikes and riots have borne witness to their sense of misery and determination to obtain redress. But the system has rolled on, enriching a few, crushing many, making wretched beyond description the bulk of the industrious masses. It has been in vain that the masters have talked of foreign competition and political causes-the men have pointed to the palaces in which they live in the worst of times, and the carriages in which they sweep along the streets past their own squalor and misery-and have been hardened in their unbelief in the arguments presented to reconcile them to their lot. It has been in vain that Christianity has been preached from church and chapel. They do not believe their sufferings as originating in the dispensations of Providence, but in the injustice of man. The arguments of patience and resignation, and the mystery of the sufferings of this life, have come with a very unconvincing aspect from those who had no need of