Proportions of Rooms.
There are few objects connected with our art that have been more frequently dwelt on by those who have undertaken to be our guides and monitors than the right proportions to be given to rooms. Vitruvius led the way, and subsequent theorizers have laid down, sometimes very dogmatically, their views of just proportions. I find, however, in the actual practice of the ablest men such extreme diversity, and I observe pleasing effects producible by the adoption of such widely different proportions, that I find myself, I confess, much inclined to be somewhat incredulous of all these theories. Certainly if beauty could be thus reduced to a formula, and the proper relation indisputably established between the length, breadth, and height of every room, a royal road would be cleared for us, which would be at least very convenient both to those who teach and to those who learn. I fear I can scarcely hope to furnish you with such a desirable help in your studies. I find rooms of universally admitted beauty, yet of almost every geometrical figure. I have heard of the room in the museum of Florence, the Tribune it is called, which contains the Venus di Medici, spoken of in terms of rapturous approval for the beauty of its form and proportions. This saloon is an equilateral octagon on plan. I have known square rooms greatly admired—such, for example, as the saloon in Cobham Hall, which is usually pointed to as one of the chefs‐d’œuvre of Inigo Jones. Who is there that is not charmed with the proportions of the Pantheon at Rome? This, you know, is circular. The classical teacher of our art, Vitruvius, seems to contemplate only rectangular forms, and directs us to adapt the double cube and the cube and a half, whether for a temple or a triclinium.
The Sistine Chapel, attached to the Papal Palace, upon which the best art of Italy in its best days was expended, is a triple cube, viz., 133 by 44. While of modern French, Italian, and English teachers, each seems to have his own special favorite proportion. The truth I believe to be that, so bounteously have we been endowed, and so liberally have the laws of beauty in form and proportion been framed, there exists in fact an endless variety of beautiful forms and proportions. My impression is that it is as little consistent with truth to lay down any one definite form or proportion as the best as it is to extol any one particular curve as the line of beauty. I believe that there are as many pleasing proportions to be given to rooms as there are pleasing harmonies of color and sound. The purpose of a room must always be an important guide in determining the form and proportions to be given to it. If planned so long in proportion to its width as to remind us of a passage, it loses its distinctive character, and creates a false impression, which it can never be good art to do. It is indeed obvious that a consideration of the special fitness of a room for its destined uses must always greatly influence its proportions. The octagon form, so much affected by our ancestors in planning their chapter houses, owes its origin probably far more to the propriety of that form for a chamber intended for the convenient assemblage of the members of the chapter sitting in council than to any intrinsic architectural beauty, however unquestionable that beauty may be.—S. Smirke.
The Firemen’s Herald says fire protection, like charity, should begin at home. However efficient may be the public service against fire, a single bucket of water properly administered may stop a fire that all the efforts of the brigade would be unable to quench, and besides, the jet of a powerful engine is as destructive in its way as fire to all perishable articles within a room, such as furniture, pictures, and bric‐a‐brac.