The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-08 00:00:00

711 E 2V

VUU7S.

The decision of the Government respecting the
architect for the new law courts has been received
with universal surprise.
Of the eleven gentlemen engaged in this the
greatest competition of modern times three or four
only came to the surface. Four or five hopelessly
submerged ; but in neither category could Mr.
Street, 1.R.A., be fairly placed. Events prove that
he is the favourite of fortune or possesses a few
staunch friends, for it must be confessed that he
finds little favour with the public, and the judges
have coldly regarded him.
If the commission meant anything, and was to be
of the slightest service, Mr. Street's appointment
must be unjust, for he obtained, it seems, but three
points out of fifty, whereas some of the less fortu-
nate competitors scored as high as forty-seven.
Surely the public have a right to demand and
receive an explanation of this result of a competi-
tion which in all its stages has been unsatisfactory
to everybody. Thus far none—none, at least, that
is not perfectly incomprehensible—has been ac-
corded by the Government which ventures to ad-
vance no other plea but that of expediency.
Mr. Welby Pugin appears in some degree to be
responsible for the apparently inextricable confusion
into which the judges and commissioners were
thrown. In his review of the designs he placed Mr.
Street at the head of the list, and he has since sup-
ported that view in a letter which appeared in the
nmes of June 23, which we reprint below. Neither
Mr. Pugiu's reasons, however, nor his facts appear
to us satisfactory, or justify, in our opinion, the
present position of affairs.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir,—Will you kindly extend the favour granted

to me on former occasions, and insert a few fur-

:her suggestions in supplement to those I have

already offered respecting the proposed New Law

Courts ?

I trust I may not be suspected of personal mo-

tives in asserting that the Government, in its final
decision, has shown greater judgment than might
have been expected if the Earl of Carnarvon's

canon about Government's " capacity, as a rule,'

for deciding on matters 46 of taste" be true. If
" the arrangement of courts and offices is of such
vital moment" that it ought to supersede all the
considerations of architectural effect, and if, as is

and his supporters,
inferred by Mr. E. M. Barry
the instructions were to be taken literally, and

not relatively, why was not the obvious common-
sense course adopted in the beginning of having a
preliminary competition confined to the general
arrangement and ground plan ? It is confessedly
in the ground plan alone that anything like com-
plete success has been achieved. If, however, the
best ground plan was found to be combined with
the worst elevation, and if the best elevation was
united to a ground plan of which the worst that
could be said was that it was " inconsistent with

some of the conditions," then the Government was
obviously reduced to the necessity of choosing be-
tween two alternatives ; and I am bold enough to
maintain that in selecting Mr. Street's designs they
have done wisely ; and, whatever may now be
said to the contrary, the Government will even-
tually receive the thanks of all competent judges of
art. If Mr. E. M. Barry's superior ground plan
failed to set off his elevations, the latter must
have been, even to a Government without " capa-
city" in respect of " taste" bad indeed. Mr. Street's
" architectural elevations," on the other hand, de-

spite their very serious defects, which I ventured to
point out in your journal of August 15, 1867, evince
a power which, when coupled with a sense of the
responsibility and grandeur of his position, will en-
able him to rise far above the comparative medio-

crity of his present design and produce a work
worthy of its purpose and of the country.
Let me, moreover, remind Mr. E. M. Barry,
first, that the Lord Chancellor declared it to have
been a question with the judges which of the authors
showed the greatest capacity for superintending the
erection of, and not merely for planning, the new
Law Courts ; and, second, that the Attorney-

General pronounced the decision in favour of two
competitors to be " invalid." I have little doubt
that Mr. Street is perfectly competent to improve
and perfect his ground plan ; but I have far less
doubt about Mr. E. ➢l. Barry's incapacity for
mending his elevations. It, therefore, resolved
itself into a matter of choice between a short

coming which any ordinarily gifted architect
could set right, and a serious evil of which there was
scarcely a hope of remedy. Who can say, then,
that the decision in favour of Mr. Street is not a
cause of congratulation, and that the Government
have shown themselves above pedantry and red-
tapeism ? Mr. E. M. Barry claims the award on
the ground of his compliance with the conditions.
This sounds well, if it were true. But if he had
fairly attended to what he considers a fundamental
principle in the competition, viz., " utility before
effect," he would never have produced that useless
and incongruous mass presented by him for our
admiration. There is no canon of art against which
Mr. E. M. Barry more incessantly offends in his
designs than this. He is ever trying to produce
" effects," independent of and at variance with both
"principle" and " utility," and be seems ready to
sacrifice every principle of his art, from sheer inabi-
lity to adapt, compromise, or combine without
totally destroying all proportion and beauty.
One may test this not only by his elevations for

the Law Courts, which abundantly demonstrate his
utter incompetency to treat a fair ground plan on
architectural principles or with aesthetic propriety,
but also by his recently executed works in
Palace-yard. With regard to the former, the
Marquis of Salisbury, whose words prove him
to be not merely an admirer, but a sound judge
of art, strangely appears on this occasion to
have attributed to Mr. Barry's design the very
expressions which most appropriately describe
that of Mr. Street—" sober and decent ;" whereas
Mr. Barry's is about as giddy, puerile,!and firework
sort of a design as could possibly be produced.
There is, positively, not one vigorous, sober, or
manly line in it from one end to the other. Again,
take the cloister in Palace-yard. Surely this can-
not be placed on the credit side of any man's repu-
tation ; and no one would ever wish to see a pro-
duction (in itself a mere vulgar adaptation of the
larger building which it ruins) reproduced -in a

thousand ways, usque ad nauseam, over a mass
covering upwards of eight acres. Supposing Mr.
E. M. Barry had got the New Law Courts, and
presuming that they take 20 years to erect, 50
years would then have elapsed since the Houses
of Parliament were designed ; and we should
find ourselves just completing a building
which could only be tolerated from the fact
that the work had been commenced 50 years before,
when " true principles" were almost unknown. In
other words, the result would be simply tantamount
of itself to archaeologically setting back the pro-
gress of the Revival by half a century, and placing
the Houses of Parliament 50 years beyond the
period of their own erection. All this, too, inde-
pendent of the injury so large a work would in-
evitably entail on contemporary operations. Let
Mr. E. M. Barry, therefore, content himself with
raising the three useless domes of his National
Gallery—with their certainty of shadow and the
non- utility spikes and pots and other ab-
surd and overlaid detail—and spare us the in-
fliction of a second and more important build-
ing equally lamentable. And let us congratulate
ourselves upon the wise and judicious deci-
sion to which (in the absence of one still more wise)
Government has arrived. It is now impossible to
consider fully the important question of site with
reference to the Thames Embankment, and to per-
fect a ground plan in all its internal arrangements
before finally deciding at all about the " archi-
tectural elevations, let us, at all events feel thank-
ful that the judges acquiesced in Lord Cranworth's
intimation that, "in addition to internal accom-
modation, convenience, and general arrangement
&c., a handsome facade was naturally expected,''
and did not sacrifice this great national work for
the sake of a ground plan which they may have
appreciated, but which is totally independent of its
elevations.
. .
A camel is a very coaveniently arranged animal,
and its c‘ internal accommodation" appears to be