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division of labour necessary to have this evidence in its most useful and complete form, that we think it may do good to have laid the matter before our readers.

The labours of Geologists among these older rocks have received a great impulse by the exertions of which we have been endeavouring to record the principal results; but the work yet to be done is scarcely of less importance, and will employ all the energies, both of the discoverers themselves and their successors, for many years, to fill up the description, of which, as yet, we have only the outline and the great distinguishing features. At this time Mr. Murchison is in Russia, pursuing there his researches into the older rocks, and carrying out the principles he has discovered and laid down in England. Professor Sedgwick has been labouring for years on the rocks of North Wales and Cumberland, which would appear to form groups yet earlier than those of Siluria and the South-West of England; while Mr. De la Beche is proceeding with the work of the Geological survey in South Wales, and will doubtless, in due time, give to the public another volume of interesting and important economic detail. All are proceeding steadily and incessantly in advancing the interests of science; and it is most gratifying to find that, in Geology at all events, and in this our land, each is labouring, so far as can be judged of, in the department in which he is likely to be most useful; and each has a clear and definite object in view, to attain which the energies of his life are well spent.

In this way, Geology has advanced, and must advance. By discussion, open, fearless, and unreserved-by untiring efforts to produce the evidence of facts in support of theory-and to depend on facts only for a confirmation of theory-and with all the earnestness, without much of the anger, of disputation these are the causes which have acted powerfully in giving to Geology the prominent and striking position it now occupies among the natural sciences. While these causes continue to act, and at present, at all events, there seems no reason to anticipate any alteration, the advance must continue; and we may confidently expect that every year will add more and more to the accuracy of Geological knowledge, and bring us nearer to that greatest of all desiderata in science-a simple, comprehensive, and universally applicable theory, which shall embrace all known facts, and be the means of adding numberless others equally interesting

and all harmonious.

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ART. IV. A Glossary of Terms used in Grecian, Roman, Italian, and Gothic Architecture. The Third Edition, enlarged; explified by seven hundred wood-cuts. 2 vols. Oxford: J. H. Parker; London: C. Tilt, Fleet-street. 1840. 2. Illustrations of Monumental Brasses. No. 1. Printed for the Cambridge Camden Society. Cambridge: Stevenson. 3. Ancient Models: containing some Remarks on Church Building. Addressed to the Laity by CHARLES ANDERSON, Esq. London Burns. 1840.

:

WE congratulate the lovers of Architecture in general, and of Ecclesiastical Architecture in particular, on the appearance of works which put them in possession, at a very moderate cost, of so excellent a compendium of information on that interesting and important science, accompanied by so large an assemblage of illustrations, taken from the best and purest models, of its minutest terms and distinctions.

Interesting and important we should consider this study at all times, and that not merely to professed architects, but to every person of liberal education, every one who has time at command, and whose station may entitle him to give an opinion on works of public utility or ornament. But how much are its interest and importance enhanced, by the present aspect of affairs, especially of Church affairs, in almost every town and village of the land.

It is about twenty years since a zealous divine and antiquary, no less anxious for the welfare of his own and succeeding generations, than acute in his investigation of the past, spoke thus despondingly on the subject of Church-building

:

"What are the requirements for a new church? That it cover the smallest possible space, be constructed of the meanest materials, be consigned to the lowest bidder, and paid for by rates wrung out of the tenantry. Neither can this miserable necessity be avoided. Every thing is now on the rack."

In ancient days

"While men's wills were more prompt, their wants were fewer, and, therefore, they had some superfluity of labour to bestow, where our farmers and peasantry have none."

And as to the higher classes

"What lord of a parish has ready money to bestow on a work of disinterested bounty? It is anticipated in that emulation of luxury and expense which is now become universal.

"If he has no money, ask him for wood; but cast an eye over his domain, and see whether his ancestors' oaks, if yet surviving the oppo

site but united perils of rapacity and waste, do not bear the 'nigrum theta' of a valuer's scrieve?

"If he have a quarry upon his estate, and the stone be unsaleable, perchance he may allow it to be wrought for the new fabric, on condition that an adequate compensation be paid for trespass. With respect, however, to conveyance, racers and even coach-horses are not to be strained by labour, to which their muscles are so little adapted.

"There is, certainly, a period of science and improvement in human society, too far advanced either for disinterestedness or imagination. At that period, by the unwearied exertions of the present generation, we have unhappily arrived. All abstract science, all the arts of life, have indeed reached a point of perfection beyond what could liave been foreseen in any earlier age; but that point has been attained at an expense which makes the purchase dear.

"Calculation has rendered us cold and selfish, and tasteless. But selfishness is often the handmaid of profusion; and that minute economy which modern habits have the peculiar felicity of uniting with great expense, leaves no heart for works of devotion and charity."*

This was said in no anti-aristocratic spirit; the feelings and habits of the writer leaning all in the opposite direction; and as to the disposition of the manufacturing population towards church-building, the same writer complained, in a discourse expressly designed to awaken public attention to the lamentable destitution of the opulent and extensive manufacturing district around him, that, from the Reformation downward, while the population had increased ten-fold, but six additional churches had been provided, making a total of thirty to 100,000 souls, and but one solitary, small, and unadorned chapel, in that portion of it, and during that period, in which the increase of population had been most rapid and overwhelming.

How happy a change are we now permitted to behold! a change to which these strong representations, and others of a like character, not a little contributed; and of which their authors lived long enough to rejoice in the commencement, though the tide, we believe, is still but rising, and will be long before it reaches the flood.

On every side, new churches present themselves to the view of the traveller, not only in crowded towns, but in the most rural and secluded hamlets. All classes of the community have at length awoke to a sense of their duty to God and their country. The landlord has felt and acted on the old paternal impulse to provide for the spiritual wants of his tenantry; the manufacturer has acknowledged the like obligation to his numerous dependents; frequently the good work has been set on

* Dr. T. D. Whitaker's History of Richmondshire, vol. i. pp. 6, 7.

foot at the pressing instance of persons in humble circumstances, who have urged on those of superior station or influence the duty of taking up their cause, and have placed their contributions unasked in their hands; and we could point to individuals who, without any ambition of attaining so honourable a distinction, have, simply by availing themselves of existing opportunities, and now directing, now following, the desires and endeavours of others, become entitled to the dignity of founders of churches, to a greater extent than has probably been the lot of any who have preceded them, since the first ages of Christianity in Britain.*

In the very district to which allusion has been made, the churches already erected or in progress, will nearly double the number existing at the period of gloom and despondence; and the interesting accounts of consecrations and preparatory ceremonials, with such ocular demonstration as a short journey in almost any direction may supply, will suffice to satisfy the most incurious observer that the process is general. Indeed, this new feature in our scenery, forces itself on the most unwilling and prejudiced eyes, and rising up at the precise moment when it was the fashion to speak of the Church of England as a structure crumbling to pieces almost without a touch, and when some of the parasitic sects, to which too much credit has been given for their adherence to it, were very pleasantly putting forth their plans for supplying its place, is worth a thousand arguments in its defence, a thousand parliamentary securities for its maintenance as the religion of the country.

Many of these structures are highly creditable to the taste and skill of the architects, and worthy of the purest ages of the styles which they profess to imitate; but this is more, we fear, than can be said of the majority; and the general result of this great movement in church-building, the greatest, we believe, since the Norman conquest, if not since British church-building began, is more to the honour of our resuscitated zeal, than our architectural talent. Nor can the remark be limited to the ecclesiastical branch of the art. Who can look on the splendid public or private mansions which for some time gave cause for the reproach, that while dwelling in "ceiled houses," and adorning them with every enrichment that wealth could purchase or ingenuity discover, we allowed the house of God to

The heralds assign a chevron as the armorial distinction of a builder of a church or mansion, and three of these honourable ordinaries are sometimes found interlaced in ancient shields: had some of our friends their due, their Majesties of Benet's Hill would have to devise means of interlacing six or seven, if not more, of these badges in their coat-armour.

lie waste, without lamenting that so large a portion of this lavish outlay, was absolutely thrown away, even with reference to the inferior object at which it aimed; and that, between tameness and mediocrity of conception, and the most absurd incongruity of arrangement, there should commonly be little to regret, when the caprice which rears these costly piles demolishes its own creation, or accident, or innate instability, forbids the architecture of the nineteenth century, to tell its tale of shame to the twentieth. Even when the highest public encouragement, both in the shape of distinction and emolument, was proposed to the restorers of our Houses of Parliament, what, after the designs of Barry, Buckler, and one or two other architects of eminence, did it produce, but German stadthouses, oriental divans, and nondescript trash, which the Hall of Rufus, and the Church of the Plantagenets and Tudors

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Where brass has learned to breathe,

And stone, like dew-drops on Arachne's web,

Looks lightly down on bannered stalls beneath-"

would have beheld in their neighbourhood with ineffable disdain. Confining our attention, however, for the present, to church building, with the exceptions already made, including the splendid restorations in several of our cathedrals, what can be more evident than that a noble opportunity for the display of national taste, had it been in existence, or at least in a state of general diffusion, has been, in a great measure, lost? We have no longer, indeed, churches, and those in the immediate vicinity of noble mansions, distinguished no otherwise from the humblest meeting-houses, than by an attempt at a cupola for the bell; the design considerably inferior in ornament to that of the stables; and owing what little of decoration it has, to the fact of its being, as to its upper member, an object among the trees of the park; it is one of the hopeful signs of the times, that something of external comeliness befitting the dignity of a National Establishment, is assigned, as a matter of course, to the humblest of our ecclesiastical edifices: but, in defining the character of that comeliness, how far have we deviated from the lines of grace and beauty, as well as from every ancient example! Even in the metropolis and its immediate vicinity, the eye is astounded by forms, which no terms of architecture as yet invented, Grecian, Roman, Italian, or Gothic, can describe; and, should we be disposed to search among the diminutive esques, Grotesque will be the nearest approximation the most fertile' imagination can supply. In those parts of the country where church-building is most general, the fanciful theory would seem

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