The Express.
London, England, 1862-10-29 00:00:00

HUM NATIO AT LONDON BRIDGE.

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29.

LONDON is a large city, but it is not a handsome
one. Mr. DISRAELI may think tho Strand the finest
thoroughfare in Europe, but he probably stands
alone in this opinion. We shine in many arts and
sciences, we are great engineers, circumnavigators,
and getters-up of joint-stock companies, but we are
not happy as builders. If we design a gothic temple
for our Houses of Parliament, with towers and pin-
nacles which ought to soar into the clouds, we place it
low down in a dismal swamp, with its feet constantly
dabbling in cold water. If we possess a square in
a part of the town where an open breathing place
is most needed, we give it up for ten or twelve
years to encroaching showmen, and allow it to be
turned into an exhibition lumber-yard. Leicester-
square is only just being relieved from an incubus
which has weighed heavily on it for many years,
and is crying out aloud for the restoration of a
statue which was buried to make room for maps
and stuffed monsters. That the leaden represen-
tation of old Gr.oauE I. will ever be
restored to its pedestal is more than
we can hope, as we have heard that it has been
dug up piecemeal by unknown hands, and sold for
pots of beer and tobacco. The shrubs and flowers,
however, may struggle to grow again for a brief
season, overshaded as they will be by French
cafga, Cockney-Moor;sh porticoes, and British
stucco.

Our prevailing style of architecture is nothing but
a dull imitation of the antique, with a coating of
soot which we may claim as an original additior.
We take no heed of climate or local colouring, and
import our architectural ornaments as we do our
kings and our cocoa-nuts. We inlay our shop-
fronts with columns looking like constables' staves,
and think we have made an excellent investment
in Corinthian capitals. We raise pillars under
porticoes which look like the legs of shaved
poodles, and think we have snatched a grace almost
beyond the reach of art. We adopt any deformity
or foreign peculiarity, if it is only warranted to be
"classic." A line of Doric four-post bedsteads,
made of stone or stucco, is considered a neat finish
for the doorways of a Belgravian crescent. They
shelter the footman, the potboy, and the greengrocer,
and that is the beat we can say for them. The
moat splendid designs exist for the architectural
improvement of the metropo'ia, but only in the
shape of water-colour pictures. One gallery of the
International Exhibition is full of such designs—
the dreams of men whose imagination is not
limited by any vulgar questions of cost. There
we may see what the Thames Embankment will
never be, and the new Babylon which will never
be erected on the ruins of Holborn-hill. In the
ugliest building in the world we may revel in the
visions of architectural opium-eaters, and wonder
why so mush beauty is not given us in a more
solid shape. Even here, however, there are no
aspirations after a national layle of architecture,
and we are still tied to the tail of Greeks, Romans,
and Egyptians. In our wildest flights upon paper
with the draughtsman's pencil, we are still only a
nation of miserable copyists.

That individual liberty which we very properly
regard as our birthright is another great obstacle
to the architectural improvement of London. What
TONIKINS think, sublime, JONES and J zwzissox
may think ridiculous, and each gentleman backs
his opinions in the most substantial manner. OM
builds a cottage like a Swiss chAlet, another builds
a mansion like a penitentiary, and the third thinks
a touch of the Elizabethan an ornament to a
dwelling. All these three styles, and a dozen
more, may stand together in the same street, or
face each other in the same square, looking more
like samples in a fancy general warehouse than a
harmonious settlement. One owrer of house
property may think stucco a good facing for a
dwelling-house, another, living nett door, may
paint his bricks red in the style of the last century,
and a third may allow his tenement to go into
" Chancery," and become the prey of ravenous
bill-stickers. The patchwork effect produced by
this liberty of action is only endured in a free
country for the sake of a principle, and is deplored