From this enumeration it must be evident that a large space will be devoted to the sciences in the nature of connected and consecutive essays; another part to the record of progress in the Building Art; and a third to news relating to Building and Builders.
Reviews and notices of publications intended for or likely to be useful to Builders, will also be given, and biographical sketches of eminent men connected with science and the arts. These separate heads, together with correspondence and inquiries, will constitute the peculiarities of our Journal, and the remaining space will assume the aspect of the general weekly press—home and foreign news; digest of Parliamentary reports; political opinions of the leading Journals; dramatic notices; general literary reviews; police and law reports; markets, and advertisements.
So ample is the field before us, that there can be no lack of matter or subjects; our business will be to cull the choicest for the literary banquet of our friends. Much that is valuable we hope and look for in the shape of correspondence; one of the chief merits of “The Builder” being, that it is a direct and fitting medium for conveying instruction from the liberal and enlightened of every department—a free exchange of knowledge—which we anticipate may result in mutual good service to all.
[1] We would instance the Civil Engineer and Architect.
WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.
We have selected the portraiture of this illustrious man, whose fame lives in national works, as the first wherewith to embellish our Gallery of Architects—a man who was eminent, not only as an architect, but as a liberal patron of the arts—not only as a builder of colleges, but as a munificent donor to the cause of education, and whose institutions still flourish among the proudest in the land. “Many there are,” says Bishop Lowth, in his Life of Wykeham, “who have felt the influence of his liberality, or who are actually partakers of his bounty.”
It is rarely that instances approaching in interest to that of our subject present themselves; of successful talent we have many, but they are limited to its mere exercise for ordinary reward; others, where ambition and ostentation, as in the case of Wolsey, stimulated to a patronage of great works, while in that of Wykeham we have a memorable example of true nobility of mind, soaring from humble origin to the most elevated stations in church and state, and fulfilling its duties by an active exercise of all the kindred virtues.
William of Wykeham was born at the village of that name in Hampshire, in the year 1324, of reputable but poor parents, whose deficiency of means to afford him education was supplied by the generous intervention of Nicholas Uvedale, lord of the manor of Wykeham, and constable of Winchester Castle, then one of the great offices of the kingdom. After going through the course of study afforded by the school at Winchester, we find him officiating as secretary to Uvedale, and subsequently executing commissions of trust as attorney for Edyngdon, Bishop of Winchester, his immediate predecessor in that see, in whose service he appears at that time to have been engaged.
The piety, diligence, and early acquirements of Wykeham had recommended him to the notice of many patrons, both lay and ecclesiastical, and paved the way for his introduction to that of the reigning monarch, Edward III., and of his son, the renowned Black Prince; he had already entered the subordinate ranks of the clergy, and the fitness of his choice was confirmed in after times by the dignities he attained to; that elevation was, however, preceded by the execution of works which have stamped his fame as an Architect.
It is natural that we should ask, how was this talent in architecture acquired? We find no account of the preparation or training, beyond that of the general knowledge he had gained at the school of Winchester, aided by the intuitive genius and taste proper to comprehensive intellectual powers. No record exists of his having studied at either of the universities, and if it had been so, the regard and confidence of the King must be attributed to acquirements very superior to those at that time current at Oxford or Cambridge, where theological controversy was the leading and absorbing theme. We are told, indeed, that Wykeham had studied “arithmetic, mathematics, divinity, and, above all, the canon and civil law;” and we see no reason to the contrary. The school of Winchester, a city then second to none in the kingdom in splendour and opulence, would scarcely be deficient of teachers in these courses of study; in the mode, and according to the then understanding of their relative uses and value.