The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-17 00:00:00

FRIDAY

EVENING, SEPTEMBER 17, 1852

DEATH OF MR. A. W. PUGIN.
Our readers will learn with mingled feelings that
the final close has been set to that eclipse of intellect
which had so awfully arrested, in its noon of vigour,
the brilliant and useful career of Mr. Pugin. His
decease took place at his residence, at Ramsgate, on
Tuesday, the 14th instant, at five in the evening.
Augustus Welby Noraimore Pugin was the only
child of Augustus Pugin by his marriage
member of the Welby family, of Denton,in Lin-
colnshire, now represented by Sir W. E. Welby,
Bart. with a
Augustus Pugin, a native of France, though settled
in England, was by profession an architectural drafts-
man, and was much distinguished in the revival of
pointed architecture which has characterised this
century, by various valuable and elaboratelyillus-
trated works, descriptive of medieval architecture,
brought out in concert with Mr. Britton and Mr.
La Keux. Though he never practised as a con-
structive architect, several well known architects
were trained in his office, of whom his own more
eminent son stood foremost. Thus trained in the
daily study of those fur ms of whose manipulation was to become so great a master, young Pugin
first appeared before the world es the editor of a post-
humous work of his father. his own curliest publi-
cation was, we believe,
a series of illustrations of
mcdixval metal work. At this period of his life
occurred that event to which we lack back with the
least pleasure—we mean his secession to the Church
of Rome. In Pugin's case, however, there were
circumstances which rendered this secession most
widely different from similar events which have
subsequently occurred. In the first place, the Church
of England of those days was, in appearance, an
entirely different thing from the Church of England
of this day, permeated and revivified by the Church
revival. It was not, therefore, to be so much won-
dered at that Pugin, young and enthusiastic, and
existing on the architectural glories of medieval
Christendom, should in those times have been unable
to see the Church of England, such as she was twenty
years back, as we now behold her. Again, his heredi-
tary religion was Romani sm. His father was a Roman
Catholic till he settled in England, and if he ever
England, it is
not on record that he illustrated his new profession by
any extraordinary exhibition of zeal. Besides, of
Pugin it can be said that he has evinced a feeling
formally conformed to the Church of
regarding the Church of England very far removed
from that manifested by later converts. He threw
himself indeed, particularly in his latter days, most
warmly into everything which betokened life in the
hes
Roman Ca- to the
e sl is h
extent C hur
oc
f h ,
tholic.
fullest twheitthetwhherinh of a sincere

About this time Mr. Pugin made his earliest con-
spicuous appearance before the public in his peculiar
line, by the publication of his racy and original
" contrasts ;" or, to quote the remainder of the title
page, "a parallel between the noble edifices of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and similar build-
ings of the present day, showing the present decay
of taste, accompanied by appropriate text." The vo-
lume, bearing date 1836, and issuing from " St. Mary's
Grange, near Salisbury" (a house which Mr. Pugin
had built for himself, and was then inhabiting),
showed that its writer and artist was a man of no or-
dinary stamp. Open to criticism as were some of
the antithetic and trenchant plates, and
no little
of the equally antithetic and trenchant prose of
this quarto, it was still a bit—a palpable, unmistake-
able hit—in spite of its being written as if to aggra-
vate all the prevalent feeling of the age, by telling it
the bluntest and most disagreeable truths in the
bluntest possible manner. In proof of that remark-
able necessity which guided, while it impelled, the
natural impetuosity of Pugin's temperament, we may
observe that in the second edition of this volume,
m
published five years later, much of the text is re-
written, in a spirit and with intentions the most re-
mote from blind, one-sided partisanship.fourteenth andlt is ob-
servable that, in this second edition, "iddle ages"
is substituted in the title-page for ,
fifteenth centuries."
Just as this period the communion to which
Mr. Pugin had joined himself evinced considerable
energy of church building, and his constructive as
well as his literary abilities soon found consider-
able employment. His first church was that little
Romanesque chapel so conspicuous from the rail-
way station at Reading. This was soon followed
by the more important new Roman Catholic
churches at Derby, Macclesfield, Hulme near Man-
chester, and Birmingham, the latter designated
from the first as a cathedral. It would be, of
course, unfair to criticise these early attempts
at illustrating principles so long allowed to rest in
oblivion. Indeed, their architect has rendered any
criticism out of the question by the openness with
which, in his later writings, he has dissected those
very structures upon which his earliest reputation was
so deservedly, for the time, based. Among his ear-
liest and most constant patrons, the Earl of Shrews-
bury dud Mr. Ambrose Lisle Phillips stood conspi-
cuous. Commissions flowed rapidly in, and among
the numerous structures which he built we shall only
mention the large Roman Catholic churches of St.
George, in Southwark ; St. Barnabus, in Notting-
ham ; Cheadle, built for Lord Shrewsbury ; the Cis-
tercian Abbey of St. Bernard, reared in the moun-
tainous tract of Leicestershire, upon a wild moor be-
longing to Mr. Phillips ; Alton Castle, near Alton
'rovers ; and the Roman Catholic cathedrals at Kil-
larney and Enniscorthy, in Ireland. Numerous,
however, as were the churches which own the name
of Pugin, there is not one in which this great
architect had fully fair play. Vast results
for insufficient means—large congregations and
spreading areas, with scanty money to cover
them—were, we believe, all but invariably the con-
ditions upon which he found that his services would
be at all accepted. And when these services had
been engaged, ignorance, prejudice, and all the
obstinate caprice of amateur false taste and sacer-
dotal self. sufficiency, were put in play to mar the
result. In that work of his, for example, which is
most accessible, the church of St. George, in South-
wark—now elevated in the new hierarchy to cathe-
dral dignity—Pugin found himself called upon to
spread, over a space of ground sufficient
in extent
for a real cathedral, a church whose stated price com-
pelled him to refrain from decorating it with that al-
most indispensable feature, even of a much smaller
church—the clerestory—while (as he published) at
the time fighting a battle with the wise committee
which affected to control him, in order to make
sure of even as much of chancel as the building
now possesses. At last it was built and opened,
and soon after its opening was proclaimed a
cathe-
dral ; and persons who are not acauainted with its
history visit it, and go away with the impression
that " this is Pugin's type of a cathedral church."
Even in the one instance where he had almost carte
blanche—the church at Cheadle—he was placed in a
position of great disadvantage, for he was first en-
joined to build a small and cheap church, and after its
ground plan had been set, he was enjoined to develop
it into a very dear one, and yet was not
alter that plan so much as to give the proper length
which he desired to the chancel ; while driven by the
haste of the patron for whom he was working to go
to an excess of mere colour, as little to be defended
it can
on the principles of sound esthetics, as
justly be charged upon Pugin. It is well known
that the only building of his which he looked upon
small but solid and original church was that
allowed toh
with anything like unalloyed satisfaction,
munificently erected upon his own land, next his..
own house at Ramsgate—the one church of which
he was at once architect and director-general. And.d
latterly—the truth must be told--this great man did
not receive from the members of his own communion
that support which he had a right to expect. Various.n
school of Pugin, imbued with Pugin° which he se
Roman Catholic architects had grown up. i
and gifted, it may be, with that malleability of temper
which might perhaps induce them to carry outh thoseo
principles more complyingly than the great ead f
the school would have consented to do ; and
accord-
ingly they thus found churches to build in plenty,
que principles,
while " Pugin" was called in for the painted glass, or
the metal work. Stern justice, of course, compelled
critics to notice, while he was yet living, the
short-
comings of Pugin's works; but equal justice compels
us now to say that we believe that be did not receive
that measure of fairplay which his deserts demanded.
It is hardly necessary for us here to notice—well
known as the fact is—how much that great national
work, the
Palace of wastnsinste" has all along
Pugin, owed to the taste and talents of ungrudgingly
bestowed to help its architect in carrying out that
Charles Barry, we feel
a
vast and intricate edifice. Sir
convinced, will be glad to reflect that future ages
will connect the name of Pugin
with his, in speaking
of that gigantic reproduction of a long forgotten
style of indigenous architecture. Cut off compa-
ratively in his youth—without a title, and not R.A.
Pugin's is et a name with
which the most de-
y
sociatt d.
corated of artists need never blush to have been as-

But while assiduously plying his pencil: Pugin did
, asufferafter
r hisan Contrasts
not
r e
years, followed by hi.
two lectures on the true principle of Christian archi-
tecture, to which a smaller volume, called "An
Apology for Christian Architecture," formed a
sequel. In the years 1841 and 1842, two articles,
on the rEvival of church architecture in the
Homan Communion in England, written by Pugin,
an d profusely adorned with illustrations of
his works, uppearkd in the Dublin Review,
and were subsequently republished in a vo-
lume. His Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament
showed considerable research, and is beautifully
illustrated; and at a much later period, 1849, he pro-
duced a most graceful volume of " floriated orna-
ment" in chromolithograph, being illustrations of
how the forms of living flowers can be adapted to the
symmetrical shapes required in ecclesiastical ornament.

About this period some of the more active of the re-
i cent converts—including particularly the " Orato-
' rians," and the writers in the Rambler—rendered
themselves very conspicuous by the extravagant and
offensive manner in which they combined their advo-
cacy of the most extreme ultramontane doctrines
with an original system of church arrangement and
decoration, founded on the conventicle idea of making
churches mere halls for seeing and hearing, and on a
mawkish predilection for modern Italian architecture,
as the architecture of modern Rome. Pugin, as
might be supposed, was equally disgusted and angered
by this ridiculous display of neophyte presumption,
and met it with
in a series of very vigorous and plain-
spoken articles, in which he spoke of the present Eag-
glish Church a tone remarkable in the productions
of a member of the Roman Church. It is understood
that at the period of his lamented illness he was en-
gaged upon a larger and more elaborate work upon
the same subject.
While studying architecture, Pugin was equally
zealous and successful in his cultivation of the arts
subordinate to it. To painted glass and mediaeval
metal work he devoted peculiar attention, and under
his directing care Mr. Hardman, of Birmingham,
established his beautiful ateliers in these two brunches
of art. Among the numerous courts in the Crystal
Palace few attracted more attention and gave more
delight than Pugin's " Mediaeval Court," rich in
these departments. We may also observe that the
eminent builder, Mr. Myers, was first noticed and
encouraged by Pugin's discerning patronage.
His skill as an artist was remarkable. The public
are pretty well aware of his powers as an architec-
tural draftsman. But as a landscape artist and a
colourist his talents were most striking, and he
had no greater pleasure than to show his port-
folios of water-colour sketches, hit of! with the
rapidity of lightning, and embodying some pic-
turesque nook of a Kentish field, or some transitory
effect of brilliant sun-set which had arrested his ready
glance.
Innumerable are the anecdotes current among his
friends of the characteristic, often eccentric, always
energetic, and always warm-hearted brusquerie of
Pugin's character. He was a very Boythorn ; and
woe to the Skimpole who tried to humbug him, or the
Dedlock who essayed to lord it over him. To the last
he combined a love of the sea as only second to his
love of a Gothic church, and at one time he owned,
and sometimes commanded, a merchant smack trading
with Holland. The proximity of the sea was one
great inducement which led him to fix his abode at
Ramsgate ; and among the appendages of his me-
diaeval dwelling was a large cutter, with which he
was always prepared, with his merry men, to push off
to the rescue of any vessel in distress upon the Good-
wins. His short figure, dark complexion, and habitual
attire had always more about them to remind a
stranger of the sailor, than to give any clue to the
person before him being the great Christian artist.
Mr. Pugin was thrice married, and leaves a widow
and a large family. We doubt not that his national
deserts will receive public attention to them, as we
fear that at the time of his seizure he was far from
affluent.—Chronicle.

PLYMOUTH MAILS.-THE SCR.ETV-SIIIP
INDIANA.

PLYMOUTH, THURSDAY. The Indiana, screw
steam-ship, Captain Lambert, sailed at four o'clock
P.M. yesterday, with mails in charge of Commander
Thurburn, consisting of seven bags for Cape
Town, six for Cape Colony, four Port Natal, five
Sierra Leone, one Simon's Bay, one Calcutta, one
Ceylon, two Ascension, four Mauritius, one Madras,
two St. Helena, and two St. Vincent. The Indiana
took 120,000/. in specie, and 400 tons of general
merchandise. The following were among her pas-
sengers ;—Lieut. and Mrs. Soady, Mr. Bryce, Mr.
and Mrs. Blunt, Mr. Jasper Newton, Mr. Tate, Mr.
Stewart, Mrs. Hamilton and two daughters, Mr.
Ash, Mr. H. E. Harrington, Mr. R. A. Smith, for
Calcutta. Captain and Mrs. Benson, child, and
servant ; Mr. B. L. Gordon, cadet ; Mr. M.
liaacke, ditto ; Mr. W. H. Stanes, Captain
Nelson, Captain and Mrs. Russell, Mejor and
Mrs. Cameron, Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, Rev.
Mr. Blythe, Lieut.-Colonel Taylor, for Madras ; Mr.
J. Bailey, Mr. R. F. Oakes, Mr. D. and Mrs. Wilson,
Mr. R. H. Price, Mrs. Wright and Miss Wilson, for
Ceylon ; Mr. Seymour, for Point de Gale ; Mona.
Giliot i'Etang and family, Mons. and Madame Bedier
and child, for Mauritius ; Mr. Allen, Mr. Lledingh,
Mr. and Mrs. Truter, Colonel Dalton and servant,
Lieut. J. Doywan, Lieut. 11. G. Simpson, for the
Cape.

The Indiana is the third of the splendid vessels GI
this class built by Messrs. Mare and Co., of Black-
wall, and is in every way a sister ship to the two that
have preeeded her, which are decidedly the best and
most perfect efficient screw-ships afloat, taking into
consideration the real amount of horse power to ton-
Ztffier-manS, ei‘veirr.al
Ellis,of the directors, including the
Lambert, together with Captain Ford,lilE theaid comir:
pany's
port in her.
able superintendent, came round to this
The number of passengers is con-
a'd erably beyond a fair average at this season of
the
year, and the line and route to our Eastern
possessions taken by this line. is evidently becoming
hasthe faivnosupirrieted. a
nTohnefidreegnulnertwyhoilfethtehce inomsuppaenry'sristhy oflPa
accommodation in the new vessels is so marked as to
secure a decided preference.
resulting to this port from its Thebeing
g rtehaet a
placedya advantages ges
de-
parture of the mails are becoming more developed by
each succeeding mail, and even thosewho
m the fury
trueth interestses e
are
tohfapponl irttichsafgoirn at timen aacknowledge
blinded d toge
the
that
served by securing the influence and spPport
gen-
tlemen connected—as Mr. C. Mare is—with thef
great
steam navigation companies of the kingdom. It is
reported another large steam navigation company is to
be formed, with which the port of Plymouth is to be
identified, and this being the case, the sooner atten-
tion is turned to the conversion of the harbour into a
besto
f
safe and convenient anchorage for large class steam-
vessels the better, for it will be impossible that the
Great Western Docks, extensive as they have been
considered in comparison with the anticipated require-
ments of the port at the time of their projection, will
be equal to the accommodation which the extended
trade of the port will require.