the Empire. If, on the other hand, the State allowed itself to be outbid by rival nations in the domain of national enterprise-if it permitted its subjects to usurp its duties or allowed their spirit of enterprise to be diverted from digging mines, cultivating land, building factories, and buying and selling merchandise, to the making of other nations' highways and the strengthening of their armies, it is clear that the interest of the individual would be hostile to the interest of the State, and that the probable ultimate result would be national decay. The Englishman who makes a railway from Moscow to Odessa may make his fortune and increase the number of English ladies' maids and English footmen. The Englishman who makes a railway from Ottawa to the Pacific may be ruined by a transaction which the State could easily in time make remunerative. But out of the ruin of the colonial investor would spring Imperial strength, while the success of the foreign speculator would contribute in some measure to the nation's weakness. Money being the necessary medium for linking land and labour together for the purpose of producing human food and of developing national strength, it follows that the absence of the link money would insure the severance of the links land and labour, which, with money, constitute the chain of power. Is it or is it not the duty of a wealthy State, with extensive uncultivated possessions and upwards of a million of paupers, to do anything towards bringing its surplus capital and labour into contact with its waste land? Political wiseacres say, Leave this work to private enterprise. We reply that private enterprise has a more legitimate domain as yet unoccupied, and that the usurpation of State duties by individuals is as likely to prove disastrous to a nation as the occupation by the State of any of the fields of local or private enterprise. It is surely a national duty to anticipate an antidote to the poison of pauperism, or to create a cure for the cancer of crime. Social and domestic foes are not so weak as to be unworthy the supremest hostile efforts of the State. It is doubtful if any great nation ever succumbed to a foreign foe until it had first been conquered by an enemy within itself. An army and a navy cannot continue to preserve a nation which not only neglects to husband its own strength, but actually sells it to the highest bidder, or permits disease to run riot within its social system. If we wish to be spared the horrors of war and the hostile sneers of rival nations, we must be something more than mere money-makers and theoretical political economists. We must concentrate our energies on the work of social regeneration and national expansion as well as on measures of defence. If we wish to preserve our moral influence, we must not only develop our material strength, but keep it relatively great by the application of science both to social and military affairs. The work of breeding men, developing brains, building muscles, imparting cunning to hands, and multiplying and improving national and colonial homes, must go hand in hand with the work of creating the most effective weapons for resisting the burglarious attempts of military nations. There are reasons for supposing that future battles will be waged with steam armies, and that victory will range itself on the side of those who possess most mechanical genius and strategical skill. Whether or no Mr. Bessemer's recently invented shooter prove. the weapon of future warfare, there seems no reason why some such engine of destruction should not be made equal to a whole army corps. The Edinburgh traction engine seems to point to the steam time when England will be able to ride to battle on horses of iron, and when her stokers will be more than a match for the dauntless Uhlan or the fiery Chasseur. And though other nations might follow her example, it would be some advantage to be foremost in the race. It would be a still greater advantage if the race were so expensive to run that no nation except a peaceful and a money-lending nation could sustain the effort. With every surplus shilling nationally or colonially and re-creatively invested, combined with a tax on foreign loans, Eng land might, in time, compel other nations to beat their swords into ploughshares by forcing on either their social reform or their bank ruptcy. And with floating fort resses around her own coasts, and half a million of men capable of doing duty on board a ship of war, she need have no fear for the safety of her own treasures. Nor, with her social system scientifically renovated, need she dread the antiquarian visit of the historical New Zealander to the ruins of St. Paul's and the broken arches of London Bridge. AS TO THE DECORATION OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. BY AN ARCHITECT. [OTWITHSTANDING the impulse given of late years to the renewed study and appreciation of our great Medieval cathedrals— monuments of a period when architecture was a genuine and living art-there is probably no building in which Englishmen in general feel so much interest as the great Renaissance cathedral which forms the central feature of our chief city. To dwellers in, or frequent visitors to London, the well-known dome forms one of the few objects, the beauty and grandeur of which seem never to be dulled by familiarity; while its general aspect and outline are equally familiar to thousands who have never seen the original, and who would be puzzled to name any one of the Medieval cathedrals from a print or a sketch, but with all whose ideas of London 'St. Paul's' is inseparably associated. And to many who are well aware of the artistic faults of the building in detail, St. Paul's Cathedral has an historical interest, apart from its architectural merits and demerits, as an outward and visible symbol of the great change in national (or rather European thought) and feeling, known as the Reformation.' It is probable, therefore, that any extensive scheme for altering and decorating St. Paul's would, when fairly brought before the public, excite a much wider and more general interest than has been aroused by any of the similar operations carried on, with varying success, in our Medieval cathedrals, and which have scarcely attracted attention beyond diocesan limits; and we need hardly apologise to our readers for some brief remarks on certain proposals, official and non-official, which have recently been made with reference to this object. A little more than a year since, it will be remembered, a large and influential meeting was held at the Mansion House, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor of London, at which a resolution was passed to the effect that St. Paul's Cathedral having been left unfinished by its great architect, its completion, with such decoration and magnificence as the wealth and skill of this age can well supply, is a duty incumbent on all those who reverence the honour of the Sanctuary, and feel pride in the architectural dignity of London.' This, and one or two subsidiary resolutions, having been passed, and a considerable sum of money (nearly £20,000) having been subscribed on the spot, the future conduct of the matter was left in the hands of a committee. The Times, of July the 17th of this year, contained a letter from Mr. F. Napier Broome, the secretary to the committee, giving a general statement of their ideas and intentions in regard to the arrangement and decoration of the building, and making an appeal to the public for more funds to carry on the work. Two months previously, on May 22, at what proved an unusually interesting meeting of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Mr. Penrose, the present Surveyor of the cathedral, read a paper on the same subject, especially with regard to the decor This would have been even more conspicuously the case had Wren been permitted to carry out his first design, making the church mainly a Greek cross on his plan, with a wide central area. As it is, the plan of the cathedral-except the spreading out of the 'crossing' under the dome-is Mediæval, though the design is Renaissance. VOL. IV.-NO. XXII. NEW SERIES. G G ative treatment of the interior; and a discussion ensued in which several leading artists and architects took part. This discussion (now printed in the Institute Proceedings) throws light upon some matters with regard to the proposed scheme, other than what can be gathered from the somewhat vague statements of Mr. Broome's letter; and some of the comments and suggestions made on that occasion ought to have more publicity than they have yet received. The letter of the Committee (for we presume their secretary must be regarded as writing in their name) refers to two subjects: the arrangement of the building for public worship, and the artistic decoration. It may just be mentioned, as a matter affecting the appearance of the building, that this part of the scheme includes the entire removal of the transept organ, and the replacing of the choir organ in two halves on each side of the arch dividing the choir from the dome area. This is about the best place, architecturally and acoustically, for the choir organ; whether it is not a pity to dispense altogether with the larger instrument, and whether this might not be similarly divided and placed on each side of the west window, is a question worth consideration. A grand west end organ, in addition to the central instrument, might prove a source of very fine effect on great occasions. But to come to the general scheme of decoration. This may be shortly stated in the words of Mr. Broome's letter. Premising that the task, from the vast dome to the smallest panel, is one requiring the greatest ircumspection and care,' he con tinues: Happily Sir Christopher Wren's declared intentions, concisely as they are expressed, give no uncertain indication; and these will be consulted at every step. The meanness of the apse will be redeemed by that 'altarpiece of the richest Greek marbles, with wreat hed and sculptured columns supporting a canopy hemispherical,' which he pro jected, and which nothing but a lack of the requisite materials hindered him from erecting. Throughout the rest of the building, mosaic, marble and gold will, without doubt, be the three chief materials of ornament: the first and last for the dome and roofs, the second for the walls, columns, and panels. In the two former, speaking generally, the treatment will be pictorial; in the three latter, richly decorative. In other words, the work which the committee contemplate, and for which they ask the public for subscriptions to the amount of a quarter of a million (an estimate probably under the mark), involves the treating of the entire building as one immense piece of polychromy, leav ing not a remnant (as far as we can gather) of the plain surface of the stone masonry; paring out the innumerable panels in the stonework, to fill them with a veneer of marble; and even slicing away the large pilasters from the piers and walls, to replace them with marbles-a proceeding which simply means cutting to waste whole tons of stone forming an integral part of the structure of the building. Now, what does the reader suppose are Wren's 'declared intentions,' which are named as the basis of this wholesale transformation of the building? We find them given in Mr. Penrose's paper at the Institute, which is the statement of a thorough and no doubt sincere advocate of the decoration scheme in its entirety. In a passage quoted by him from the 'Parentalia,' it is stated that the 'inside of the cupola is painted and richly decorated by an English artist, Sir James Thornhill;' and with regard to the aisles, that the lesser cupolas are both ways cut in semi-circular sections, and altogether make a graceful geometrical form . . . and the arches and wreaths being of stone carved, the spandrils between are of sound brick invested with stucco of cockleshell lime, and which, having large planes between the stone ribs, are capable of further ornaments of painting, if required.' Not a word about painting the stonework, it will be observed. In a note to this passage in the Parentalia' it is further stated that 'the judgment of the Surveyor was originally to have beautified the inside of the cupola with the more durable ornament of mosaic-work, as is nobly executed in the cupola of St. Peter's at Rome, which strikes the eye of the beholder with a most magnificent and splendid appearance, and which, without the least decay of colours, is as lasting as marble or the building itself.' But this design, we are informed, did not receive due encouragement, owing to apprehensions as to the expense and time necessary for its execution. In the same note reference is made to the intended magnificent design for an altar, 'with four pillars of the richest Greek marbles,' already referred to in the quotation from Mr. Broome's letter. This is the whole evidence as to Wren's wishes that is put forward by those who are most urgent in behalf of the proposed elaborate scheme of decoration; and what it amounts to is apparently this-that Wren would have preferred mosaic in the dome rather than Thornhill's painting; that he contemplated the painting of the plastered portions of the roofs, if required; and that he had wished to have an ornamental altar canopy of costly marbles. This, it will be admitted, is scarcely evidence that Wren had ever for a moment contemplated the idea of painting the whole church, walls and all, and the replacing of all the stone pilasters with marble, and filling all the panels over the church with marble veneer; and we cannot but think that the Committee have assumed a somewhat false position in calling on the public for funds for the completion of St. Paul's Cathedral,' the very use of the word 'completion being in fact a begging of the main question at the outset. We are not alone in this view. It appears that one of our most eminent architects, Mr. Street, some little time since addressed a letter to a member of the Committee, protesting against what he considered the wholesale alteration of the fabric under the name of 'decoration.' This letter, it is understood, received the respectful attention due to suggestions from such a quarter; but it is not alluded to in the statement of the Committee, and nothing was publicly known of it until the meeting of the Institute of Architects before mentioned, when Mr. Street read himself some portions of his letter (since printed as a pamphlet), and further enforced the opinions therein expressed. His remarks are characterised by so much common sense and true architectural feeling, that we shall feel justified in giving to some part of them a more general circulation than they have hitherto obtained. After calling attention to what we have already remarked upon, viz. the extremely slight and general nature of the indications as to decoration given by Wren, Mr. Street proceeded to observe: In the Report of the Committee put upon the table just now, it is stated, with regard to the marbles they propose to use, that whether used structurally as replacing the stonework of the principal pilasters, or in panels or inlaid patterns on the walls and pavement, they would all be arranged so as to impart a fuller idea of sumptuousness.' The Committee start by substituting for Wren's plain stonework, marbles for the pilasters and panels; and I appeal to you whether this must not be regarded, not as a completion or restoration of Wren's work, but as an entirely new work, which must alter the whole architectural character of the fabric, and modify or change all its architectural lines and features. That seems to me, as I hope will to you, somewhat too large and rash a programme for the conservative treatment of a great church. For my part, I must say that I cannot understand upon what principle we are to treat St. Paul's in any other way than we would the work of any of the architects of our old English cathedral churches; or why Wren's work, if worth keeping at all, is to be treated with so little respect. |