Of the Elizabethan and Jacobean buildings it is necessary to say little, as at best they are but clumsy imitations of the Flemish, French and Italian Renaissance, while the style which we now call Queen Anne came in towards the close of the XVIIth century, and belongs of right to the reign of Charles II.

Hawkesmore, a pupil and follower of Wren, was a strong architect who has left us Christ Church, Spitalfields, and S. Mary Woolnoth. He also designed the western towers of Westminster Abbey, often wrongly ascribed to Wren, and the second quadrangle of All Saints' College, Oxford. This architect, like the majority of his contemporaries, misunderstood and despised the Gothic style, with which he had little real sympathy; he drew out designs, which still exist, for converting Westminster Abbey into an Italian church, just as Inigo Jones had done with the exterior of the nave of old S. Paul's, but we cannot be too thankful that this abominable suggestion was never carried out.

An English Renaissance Church.
S. Stephen's, Walbrook, London.
Generally considered to be Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece.
From an Engraving dated 1806.
Click to [ENLARGE]

With King George III. on the throne our ancestors contented themselves with dull, but substantial, buildings of which some hard things have been written, but they were at least respectable and free from sham, while the churches, although not elegant, were well-built and occasionally picturesque, as we see by the perfect little building of this date at Billesley, Warwickshire.

The eighteenth century pseudo-classical abominations and sham Gothic, so favoured by Horace Walpole and his admirers, can be briefly dismissed. A more rampant piece of absurdity than that of erecting imitations of portions of Greek temples and adapting them for Christian worship it is difficult to imagine, and in the Pavilion at Brighton, Marylebone Church, and the "Extinguisher" Church in Langham Place we even surpassed in bad taste and vulgarity all the absurdities of the Continental architecture produced by the French Revolution.

Barry and
Pugin.

Two men now came on the scene who, united, were destined to bring some kind of order out of this chaos. Barry and Pugin were both scholars and architects, for while the former rather favoured the classical style he thoroughly understood the Gothic, while Pugin was a thorough mediævalist, a true artist, and a bold exponent in his "Contrasts" of a complete return to mediæval architecture as the only possible cure for the evils which had crept into the art of building.

Barry's idea, which was perhaps the more practical, was to correct by careful study the errors into which the later exponents of both Classic and Gothic architecture had fallen, and endeavour by well thought out modifications to evolve a style more suitable to modern requirements. Pugin, however, would have none of the evil thing, and although he supplied his friend with designs for the details and woodwork of the Houses of Parliament which Barry was rebuilding, they did not collaborate in any further way, and both died before the Houses of Parliament were completed, in which, as a matter of fact, Barry's designs were completely ignored. The Reform Club is considered to be the best of Barry's classical buildings.

Pugin's earlier works were mostly Roman Catholic churches, and they are acknowledged to be an immense advance on any Gothic work which had been seen for centuries. In the Roman Catholic Cathedral of S. Chad, at Birmingham, there is a dignity, loftiness and simplicity surpassed by few Gothic buildings when that style was at its zenith, and from the time Pugin designed this building, architecture—notwithstanding our exhaustive study of archæology, our immense resources of capital and labour, our science and labour-saving appliances, and the comparative accessibility of the finest materials—has neither developed nor advanced. The most erudite Gothic mason could have possessed but little art knowledge as compared with the modern architect, and yet with our learned societies, wonderful libraries, easily obtained photographs and plans of the best buildings in the world; with writers far superior in intellectual acquirements to those of the Middle Ages, our vast wealth, with our tools such as the mediæval craftsman could never have dreamed of, and with the experience of twenty centuries to guide us we have made no advance during more than half a century. Our best architects acknowledge that until we get a new method of building, originality in architecture is an impossibility, mainly because all the existing styles of architecture have been worked out to their legitimate conclusion, and have been perfected under circumstances and conditions with which we have entirely broken; the originality in detail which pervades and permeates our Gothic buildings and gives them the greater part of their charm, must, of necessity, be out of our reach until we blend the spirit of what we are pleased to call our practical age, with a certain amount of that spirit of poetry and romance, religious fervour and devoutness, which animated the builders and craftsmen of the past.

A Typical Cornish Font.
Probably of the late Norman period. Now at Maker, near Plymouth.
Click to [ENLARGE]