The Express.
London, England, 1853-08-08 00:00:00

As the comparatively liw price of ►ugar—it'
being now from 3s. to 4s. pc rcw t. less than at this time
last year—has checked importation, 6o the rise in the
price of bread-st utfs has already given 9, great stimulus
to the importation of them. The importation of wheat
and flour in the month and in the six months, was
as follows :

Imported
In the month. In six months.
18.52 1853. 1852 1853
W neat .. qrs. 219,622 1.02,599 2,01:3,789
1 ~ur..c sou. 437,411 369,541 257.346

Reducing flour and meal to quarters, and including
all kinds of grain, the quantities imported were in
the six months:

1851,
3,037,301 qrs.

18.53
e. 831,607 qrs.

This increase in 18.53, in the doubtful state of our
harvest, is very satisfactory, because it shows how
influential is a rise in the price of corn to the extent
of a few shillings is procuring additional
supplies. It is a full assurance that with
a still higher price, such as has taken place
since the end of June, still larger supplies will come
in from all quarters. From the weekly and monthly
returns we learn that this has actualiy taken place.
According to the Gazette, there were imported of all
kinds of grain and flour in the four weeks of July :
is".'!. 18.13.
Qrs. Qrs.
4r.5,302. 747,823
Increase, 1553

or at the rate of 3,390,232 qrs. per annum above the
large supply of last year. Such a fact may serve to
allay all apprehension for our future supply of food,
' while the rise in price, which fortunately for us our
Government does not, like the French Government,
interfere to stop, wiil cheek consumption, and put an
end to waste.

There is no change in the tenor of navigation re-
turns since last month to induce us to say more of
them than that the total ships and tonnage entered
inwards and outwards in the six namtlis were as
follows :

•
Shire. Tonnage.
18.12 "i 5,03,499
1853 30,316 .... 6,657,749

Increase 18.53 3,079 .... 664,2.50

About half a million tons of goods were transported
to and from our harbours by water in the first six
monthsof 1833 than in the first six months of 1632,and
whether the shipping employed in transporting
them were native or foreign, as our shipowners
have quite as many goods to carry as they
can find ships to carry them, is of no importance
whatever, except that wo may rejoice in haying ob-
tained the assistance of the foreigner to carry on an
increased trade on favourable terms.

AN association is on foot for improving the Metro-
polis. If they move in the right path they may do
much good. In the present day we find ourselves
under the odd conditions of being obliged to build on
an unprecedented scale, and of being wholly deficient
in truly architectural capacity. Every ten years the
Metropolis adds to its astounding bulk a number of
houses, churches, and public edifices, larger than that
which constitutes the entire mans of almost any
other city in the world. That Florence in" compo,"
Belgravia, stands on fields which are still green in
our memory; Notting-hill and St. John's-wood are
among the rural recollections of the present
generation ; and a dozen other suburbs, great
cities in themselves, have started into
plaster existence quite as recently. Oa a
moderate computation, a hundred miles of street
were added to London in the time between the
taking of the last census and the one before it. Yet
a man may set out, with the map of London in his
pocket, and, having traversed and examined every
house in this wilderness, will have to confess that, as
to art, he had traversed a city of the dead. The
vast majority of the edifices he beholds are neither
more nor less than mud-huts, compacted with no
higher view than that of the greatest economy of
clay consistent with the duration of the pile until the
expiration of the land-lease of ninety-nine years ;
and the rest cover their nakedness with a robe of
falsehood and affectation far more distressing than
nudity, and distressing in proportion to its supposed
magnificence. He and there, indeed, you come
upon the attempt of some amateur student of Pugin
and "The Glossary" to realise a morsel of architec-
tural truth ; but the result is as unlovely and objec-
tively absurd (however subjectively respectable the
endeavour) as are, most commonly, the first proceed-
ings of all sudden and late converts to any kind of
truth. There is something painfully Protestant about
the bit of Tudor Gothic in real red-brick and stone
ashlar that sets itself down among its flaunting
neighbours of renaissance plaster-work with an air
of mock-humility and architectural sanctity. The
wretched mud-hut, with its blank face of bilious bricks
pierced with three or four tiers of square holes
for windows, and surmounted with its coping
stone of the pauper projection of two inches, le
artistically much less distasteful. It is a faithful
exponent of modern poverty of soul, and is really
and unaffectedly humble. It looks like what it is, •
little workhouse, of which the inhabitants are too
much absorbed in the business of getting and con-
suming the lowest wants of life to be able to give
their thoughts to beauty or joy of any kind. It
avoids, on one hand, the ghastly falsehood of decking
out its nothingness in mockeries of pagan splendour,
and, on the other, it escapes the worse error of en-
deavouring to deal with a reality which is little
understood and lees cared for.

Looking from the private houses to the churches
and public buildings, the signs of a living architec-
ture are not more visible, although it must be con-
feued that the Metropolis now possesses some very
notable restorations of defunct architectures. The
British Museum and the Grecian Church and rail-
way portico in Euston-square place Athens at our
doors. The " Panopticon" in Leicester-square is as
moresque as need be. Numerous recent churches are
faithful to the letter of sacred Gothic; and in their
imitations of the secular Gothic the new Houses of
Parliament equal—if not surpass—anything in the

original time; of the art. But upon all thee; edifices
there is the curse of imitation, Iffelessneu. We have
seen it all before, either in actual Greece and Gothic
Europe, or in the picture•books of RETETT and
STUART, the Dilettanti Society, BLOXIIAY and
PARKER; or if we have not seen it in such quarters
we know that it is to be seen there, and that it was
drawn thence—and this consciousness is as bad.

New streets, new churches, new national galleries,
new colleges and clubs, new edifices of every kind
and magnitude, public and private, are about to be
built. The next quarter of a century promises to be
as abundant in architectural additions to the Metro-
polis as the last has been. And are we to have no
new or true way of building? We are all disgusted
with the architectural hypocrisies of the day, but we
all ask, what is to be done? Better call out of their
graves dead forms of beauty than build without any
reference at all to beauty. Better, in our public
buildings at least, put up with triglyph' and
garlanded skulls, with crockets and corbel-
heads, than confine ourselves to our own peculiar
style, which is that of the Penitentiary and the
workhouse. If, however, we are thus absolutely re-
duced to imitation, let us imitate what is best worth
imitating. Let us take up English architecture
where it may fairly be considered to have left off,
namely, at the Tudor Gothic, the Most beautiful
secular architecture in the world, and endeavour by
a true adherence to its principle, which is that of
adorning, convenience, use, and comp!, to develop