ASSIZE COURT, MANCHESTER.
An age of municipal and civic development has found for the buildings it requires a representative architect in Mr. Waterhouse, who has erected most of the magnificent town-halls and court-houses of the great provincial cities. These vast, and in a certain sense beautiful, buildings are the only ones that can compare with the old cathedrals and castles of England, built with as serious a purpose as theirs, and with as physiognomical a relation to the age that produced them. Mr. Waterhouse takes the Gothic style for his basis, just as a pomoculturist might take a russet as the basis of the apple he means to produce, and, like him, modifies only in obedience to the fundamental law of the style he has selected. His Gothic building has in it nothing capricious or eccentric. So genuinely as, under change of conditions and needs, the bent and bound boughs were copied in the first pointed stone arch, even so, by lawful adaptation, may the window point become more obtuse or the lancets more luminous; but the lesson of this style, which, above all others, has no part or trait not traceable to a use, is never lost, and the Gothic of Mr. Waterhouse is the natural evolution of that found in Westminster Abbey. In one of his buildings, and one of the best structures in the world, the Manchester Assize Court, I could discover but two things which appeared to me without special use or meaning. These were two small figures, a snail and a frog, carved in granite, sitting in the angles of a wall on each side of the main door-way. Of course these may not be mere jeux; they may have some connection with a previous bit of eccentricity in an older building (such as it is often desirable to copy and preserve for archaeological reasons); but these two forms, each about as large as one’s two fists, were the only things in the vast building which appeared “not to the point.” In going over this building I speedily found that it would not do to pass anything, as the most casual-seeming bit of ornament was apt to possess a root in history. Thus the superstructure of the great portico at the entrance is supported by detached shafts of solid granite two feet in diameter, which stretch out into foliage as they meet the low roof; but on examination it is discovered that, framed in this foliage, are finely carved and most appropriate representations of ancient modes of punishment—persons undergoing the pillory or some ordeal, broken on the wheel, wearing the mask, or bridle, for scolds, and the rest. On the outside wall the decoration of the upper edge of a large corbel is twined about the words, “He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.” Over a gate leading to the judges’ residence the tympanum of the gable is adorned with a fine mezzo-relievo of the Judgment of Solomon. On each side of the grand entrance are carved two chained dogs, imposing enough to be mythologically descended from Cerberus and Orthros themselves. There are but two figures on the outer walls, one of “Justice,” another of “Mercy.” The building is a parallelogram in form, with a frontage of 335 feet. Within is a grand hall 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, 75 feet high, with an open timber roof of eight carved bays, the principals having moulded brackets and ribs forming pointed arches, and the spandrels filled in with elegant tracery. Carved figures hold the chandeliers. Around this hall, which is for state receptions and banquets, run in ancient letters the words of the Great Charter: “Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur aut disseisiatur de aliquo libero tenemento suo vel libertatibus vel liberis consuetudinibus suis, aut utlagetur aut exulet aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terræ. Nulli vendemus nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum vel judiciam.” This makes about as beautiful a cornice edging as can well be imagined. The last sentence is repeated on a stained window at the end of the hall:
To none will we sell
To none will we deny
To none will we delay
Right or Justice.
The subject of the window illustrates the history of the Great Charter—King John in the centre, and Archbishop Langton and Chief Baron Robert Fitzwalter on either side. There are three miles of corridors, all with a dado of tiles more than a yard deep, of a rich brown tint, and capped with a scroll made of lighter colors. On the whole, I can hardly express adequately my admiration of this superb building, the total cost of which was £130,000.
MINTON TILE.
In the centre of Manchester the same architect has erected a larger building, a Town-hall, which cost £1,000,000. Rich and admirable as it is, it is not, on account of the crowding of houses around it, and the irregularity of the ground upon which it is built, so effective in appearance as the Assize Court. The interior decoration is remarkable for the beautiful variety of colors secured by a careful mingling of English, Scotch, and Irish granites grouped as double stems in the balustrade of a spiral stairway. The Irish granite is a bluish-gray, the Scotch has a faint red tint, and the English Shapfels has salmon-colored spars, which are as large as raisins. They all take a beautiful polish, and I think that for a large public building the effect is better than if they were marble.
Manchester has shown good sense and good taste in having employed Mr. Ford Madox Brown to paint six, at least, of the panels in the great hall of this Town-hall. These mural paintings are not surpassed by any recent work of the kind which I have seen. Mr. Madox Brown is pre-eminent for his archæological knowledge and poetic conceptions, and his genius has been at its best in these noble works. At the time of this writing three panels have been finished. The first represents the Romans building a fort at Mancenion (Manchester), anno 60. Agricola, Governor of Britain, is represented with a centurion beside him, examining a parchment plan of the Camp; a standard-bearer holds the silken Dragon-standard—emblem borrowed from the “barbarians”—which floats in the wind. The Legionaries are doing mason-work; Britons bear the stones and cement. Agricola’s wife and little boy are in the scene. The second panel represents the Baptism of Edwin, at York, in the year 627. The artist follows the account of Bede, who says that a small wooden church was hastily erected for this purpose on the site where York Minster now stands, but has introduced a Roman mosaic floor. In his noble picture of Edwin he has been inspired by Wordsworth’s sonnet, “Paulinus:”