Hyde Park Corner; but they are not for a moment to be put in comparison with the structures reared during the same period at Paris or St Petersburg. When we approach the portico of the church of Cazan at the latter metropolis, the sublime statue of the Czar Peter standing on its granite pedestal, weighing eighteen hundred tons, or the noble pillar to Alexander, we feel as if, coming from London, we had passed from the works of pigmies to those of giants. Every thing in the English capital is neat, elegant, and sumptuous; the plaster fronts are delicately moulded; they are in general clean, and washed with a warm tint; sculpture adorns the pediments; columns and statues are to be seen in abundance. But all is on a Lilliputian scale in point of magnitude, and ephemeral in point of endurance; nothing indicates a people whose taste is grand and elevated either in their public or private structures. Everything in the Russian metropolis bespeaks solidity, permanence, and majesty. Granite paves the streets, granite composes the columns, nations appear to have been employed in the construction of monuments calculated for eternal endurance. English travellers long turned into ridicule the slow progress, under the Bourbon princes, of the public monuments commenced by Napoleon; year after year the workmen were to be seen chipping at the capitals, or polishing the columns. Regent Street, during their slow growth, rose up at once in complete lustre, and the English began to flatter themselves that their capital was about to become the most beautiful in Europe. Now, however, the works are done! after thirty years' labour the scaffolding is removed, the workmen have disappeared, and while the plaster fronts of the English structures are already beginning to decay, or show in gaping fissures but too clearly the perishable nature of their materials, the Parisian monuments stand forth pure and brilliant in their first youth, destined to captivate mankind for hundreds of years.

To these general observations on the ephemeral or perishable nature of the English monuments, an exception must be made in the case of those structures which are for purposes of acknowledged utility, as our bridges, docks, aqueducts, canals, and roads. Unquestionably, the age which has produced London and Waterloo Bridges, the Manches

ter Railway, the Caledonian Canal, the Thames Tunnel, the Menai Bridge, Pont Cysilte Aqueducts, and the West India Docks, need not fear a comparison with the public works of the same description of any other people. Grandeur of conception, durability of materials, respect for futurity, characterise all these undertakings. But it is from the very grandeur of these useful works, and the comparatively trifling nature of all destined to mere ornament, that we augur worst of the spirit of the age in this particular. It is evident that we want neither wealth to execute, nor genius to conceive, great works worthy of our reputation in other respects. It is the mania for what is to produce a return which paralyses all our efforts. We have become a mere race of utilitarians, or, what is worse, of selfish and grasping men. Nothing is undertaken on a scale worthy either of the age or of posterity, unless it promises a good dividend. We are, in truth, a nation of shopkeepers. The impatience of the democratic, the selfishness of the mercantile spirit, have got possession not only of the national councils, but the public taste. The love for the great, the future, and the excellent, has been superseded by the passion for the useful, the present, the brilliant. Profit is all in all. We have sadly degenerated from our ancestors. Our ornamental structures no longer resemble the stately castles and cathedrals of former times; but rather the towers, drawbridges, and palaces which were painted on the canvass tents of the nobility in the Polish diets, which cast a fleeting lustre over the scenes of those stormy assemblages, and when they were dispersed vanished for ever!

Mercantile habits are far from being inconsistent with the enduring and elevated spirit which produces the grand and the beautiful in the fine arts; witness the matchless glories of the Acropolis, the imposing streets of Genoa, the marble palaces of Venice, the perfection of architecture at Florence, the venerable piles of Ghent. On the contrary, when rightly directed, they are the best foundation for excellence in these departments; because they provide the wealth necessary for their construction, and at the same time induce that liberality of mind, and custom of large expenditure on great objects, which are essential to success in all the higher walks of human genius. England, till within

these few years, has been guided by an aristocracy combining the most eminent in rank, wealth, and talent; and their sway, if no longer paramount in the legislature, is at least still predominant in all the educated classes of the people. How, then, has it happened that a nation pre-eminent in the aristocratic turn of its habits and inclinations, and once so remarkable for the grandeur and sublimity of its public structures, should now be so deplorably superficial in its ideas in these respects, and openly proclaim itself incapable of undertaking any work which is to take five years in building? We profess ourselves unable to account for such a degradation, if it is not to be found in that parsimonious and shortsighted spirit which, for twenty years, has been increasing with the growth of popular influence amongst us, and at last produced the great convulsion of 1832. During all this time, Government was disabled from undertaking any great or durable works, (with the exception of Windsor Castle, which was defrayed from that "Godsend," the repayment of the Austrian loan,) by the incessant clamour of the popular party against unnecessary expenditure, and the growing jealousy of the people at any works of magnificence on the part of their rulers. Strange to say, the popular party, during all that period, not only took no interest in national structures erected by Government, but rather felt an antipathy to them. They considered them as a culpable display of luxury on the part of a bankrupt establishment, and grudged every shilling laid out on works which were not peculiar to the Sovereign, but the common patrimony of the nation. Hence the long peace which followed the capture of Paris has been a complete blank as to any great or worthy architectural monument on the part of Government. But it is Government in the later stages of society which can alone originate all great edifices, and, by the love for the durable and majestic thus created, influence the taste of the nation, and determine the character of private structures, or of voluntary associations of individuals. With us the master-spirit has been awanting, the key-note has not been struck and hence the insulated efforts of individuals have wasted themselves on perishable or unworthy structures, and the national taste, in an age of wealth, luxury, and refinement, has taken an entirely wrong direction.

Democratic societies are occasionally capable of rearing the most admirable monuments; but in all such cases, it will be found that, though in form a republic, the supreme power has in reality been lodged in a single individual or a few persons, whose talents, eloquence, or popular arts have given them undisputed authority. The republic of Athens erected the matchless peristyle of the Parthenon, the imposing gateway of the Propyleum; but it was at a period when the talents of Pericles had given him, for a long course of years, an unresisted authority, and when the influence of Athens was able to turn to the embellishment of their city the common treasures of Greece at Delphi. Hence his wellknown saying to one of the Grecian demagogues, who complained of the expenditure, that if the people of Athens grudged the cost of the edifices, let them inscribe them with his name, and he would defray it himself. Mercantile wealth has often, as in Tyre, Carthage, and the modern Italian or Flemish cities, been the parent of architectural splendour, but in all such cases it was a proud and highminded aristocracy who were the real rulers of the state, and practically intrusted with the direction of the affairs. A genuine democracy is at once shortsighted and selfish, stingy and rapacious; parsimonious to all other parties or objects, avaricious and rapacious for its own advantages, or the fortunes of its favourite leaders; and such a spirit is the precise reverse of the disposition required for architectural greatness, which of all other things requires most the elevated views, grandeur of conception, and durability of design, which belong to bodies whose interests and habits are detached from the shifting quicksands of popular administration, and fixed on the permanent character of aristocratic government. America, while she continues republican, will never produce any edifices worthy of being put in comparison with the cathedrals, castles, monuments, and palaces of the old world. Hence the astonishment and admiration of its ingenuous citizens at the majestic edifices of that description in modern Europe. France produced none during the days of her republican frenzy; the magnificence of Paris is all to be referred to the reigns of Louis XIV. and Napoleon. During the Convention and the Directory enormous fortunes were made by the civil and military employés of the Repub

lican Government, but nothing great or durable in the arts or public structures was attempted by the public rulers. They had plenty of fêtes, spectacles, and banners, but not one structure of lasting magnificence or utility set on foot :* and like them the Reform mobs in Great Britain four ago overspread the land with banners, processions, and tricolor flags; but have not yet reared one monument higher than the foundation stone, in honour of Maxima Charta, or the Father of the Reform Bill.

years

The unfortunate circumstance of stone or marble not being found in the neighbourhood of London has undoubtedly had a most prejudicial effect, not only on the durability, but on the character of its architectural edifices. If the freestone quarries of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, had existed at Highgate or Hampstead, not only would the metropolis have been constructed of lasting materials, but their solidity and cost would have stamped a character of simplicity and grandeur upon its architecture, which constitute the only foundations of real excellence. It is impossible to construct long rows of whited sepulchres with stone: the meretricious and overloaded ornament of modern London would have effectually vanished with the mere use of a hard material for building. There is no end to stucco friezes or statues : it is easy to cast capitals, according to " Mr Nash's positive order," in a mould, and whitewash them to resemble freestone; but it is not so easy a matter to play these antic tricks with solid masonry, or run the risk of destroying a sumptuous edifice by the ridiculous attempt to effect innovations in the Grecian orders. If the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square had been constructed of stone, it would never have exhibited the pepper boxes and vitiated taste which makes all Englishmen blush who recollect the Louvre or the Vatican. Had Buckingham House been built, as it should have been, of freestone or marble, it would never have exhibited that overloaded ornament and unbecoming proportion which, notwithstanding much beauty of detail, render it no fit palace for the kings of England.

We are far from wishing to encourage the vanity which provincials in general, and the citizens of Edinburgh in

* The Pantheon, though disgraced by the bones of Marat, was both begun and finished by the Bourbon dynasty.