Measured in miles they are part of our country, as existing within our shores, but measured by years their forms and the feelings that created them are as remote from us and our civilisation as if they were a thousand miles away and situated in another land. The education of the present day is based on the literature of Greece and Rome, to which has been added a vast and varied literature of our own, created since the middle ages passed away. The advance of science in every direction has expanded and improved every faculty of our minds, while the marvellous development of the mechanical arts has revolutionised every relation of life. We may restore the Heptarchy, but it is impossible for any educated man to return back to the limited knowledge and narrow views of the fourteenth century. He may play at doing so, and fancy he is reproducing the middle ages, when he is copying in architecture, what was the inevitable product of a system he does not understand and which, with the motives that gave rise to it having passed away, cannot now be resuscitated.

Although it is not known that any specific instructions were issued to the architects on that head, yet from the known proclivities of the selected four, as well as from the almost universal desire of the English Church at the present day, it may be assumed with very considerable certainty that four designs for a Gothic cathedral will be submitted to the committee to choose from. Whether they will be better or worse than that by which the late Sir G. Scott won the prize in the competition for St. Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh remains to be seen. That architect was fortunate in selecting Rievaulx Abbey as the model for his design. With very few alterations in the form to suit it for its new purpose, and some in detail, he was enabled to produce what may be characterised as our finest Gothic church of the nineteenth century. There are faults in it both liturgical and artistic, which one might have expected so experienced a church builder would have avoided, but taking it all in all, if we must have Gothic churches there is very little to complain of.

It is almost safe to prophesy that, like it, the new design will be in the Early English style. The Decorated is too expensive and too difficult to design, and the Perpendicular is an abomination in the eyes of English architects, while it is difficult to find words of opprobrium sufficient to characterise the Tudor. In the choice of this style the architects are probably right; there is in it a simplicity combined with strength and elegance, which was not surpassed in subsequent developments; and had architecture alone been the aim of the builders, many of its features would have been retained till a very much later age. But in the fourteenth century painted glass was becoming almost as important a feature for church decoration as the architectural form itself, and the windows had consequently to be enlarged, and the tracery in their heads to be modified, so as to meet its require

ments. Bit by bit, consequently, the improvement in this direction went on till it produced such a glorious wall of glass as the east window of York Cathedral, or such a fairy-like creation as King's College Chapel at Cambridge.

Whatever style may be adopted, it is one of the conditions of the problem that the style shall be copied literally and servilely; no deviation from its form and no attempted improvement in its details would for one instant be tolerated. We are so familiar with its details that any innovation would be immediately detected, and tampering with so perfect and complete a style reprobated by every one. It is, however, in consequence, like all cases of arrested development, impossible to make it suit the altered circumstances of the case. One of the most remarkable defects of the imitations of the thirteenthcentury churches is their darkness and gloom when the openings are filled with stained glass, which is indispensable for their completeness. In some of Sir G. Scott's latest and best churches-the parish church at Kensington, for instance the effect is most painful and oppressive, and in many, like St. John's Chapel at Cambridge, you can hardly see to read on the brightest day.' The Puritans saved most of our cathedrals from that reproach; but if the authorities go on filling the windows of Westminster Abbey with coloured glass, as they are now doing, the beautiful details of the internal architecture will become nearly invisible, and as modern glass is usually of a very inartistic character, its darkening effects are generally resisted by the public taste.

It was apparently from the existence of some feeling that Gothic architecture was not suited to the wants of the present day, though not properly formulated or expressed, that induced the men of Liverpool to show such indifference and apathy towards the erection of their new cathedral, of which the bishop complains in his last charge. The merchants of Liverpool are not archæologists or antiquarians, and do not care to see erected in their midst a gloomy monastic pile, recalling no memories with which they have any sympathy. Like their ancestors in the reign of Queen Anne, they want light, and air, and a certain amount of spaciousness in their places of worship, as well as in their houses and public buildings, and are not content with the long-drawn aisles and narrow vaults which characterised the churches of the early middle ages.

The truth of the matter seems to be that men are beginning to

1 A curious instance of the misapplication of painted glass is to be seen in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral. There the windows have recently been filled with stained glass to such an extent that its beautiful architecture is quite invisible. Sometimes, if the external door is left open, some of it may be seen in its immediate neighbourhood, but under other circumstances it is not more visible and impressive than a series of vaults in the London Docks, or any great warehouse in the city. Yet if it could be properly seen it is perhaps the most beautiful apartment of its kind in Europe.

get tired of the thirteenth century and all its works, as they are sure to do, in the long run, of any fashion that is not based on any real want, and not the product of an earnest intellectual effort. They are longing for a change for something new, in fact, that will satisfy that craving after novelty which is the great element of progress when directed in a right direction, but so apt to lead astray when capriciously exercised. It was some such feeling as this that induced Sir Tatton Sykes, when he offered to build, at his own expense, a cathedral for the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, to adopt the unpatriotic resolution of going abroad for a design. When at Vienna, he seems to have been struck with the elegance of the Votiv Kirche, recently completed in that town, and agreed with the architect, Herr Ferstel, to sell him the original drawings, making only some slight alterations, which may or may not be improvements, but from them the church is now being erected on the site of the old prison in Pimlico.

The church is a copy, on a very reduced scale of course, of Cologne Cathedral, and has many of the beauties of that celebrated church, but like all German Gothic designs, of the age of Cologne Cathedral, though mechanically perfect and of considerable elegance, they are all sadly deficient in that poetry and abandon which make French and English churches of the same age so fascinating and attractive. Notwithstanding this, the Votiv Kirche is of a very elegant design, light and spacious; and avoiding many of the faults of our Early English designs, will no doubt be very much admired when erected, and will satisfy that craving for something new which is manifesting itself in architectural circles. It can hardly, however, be expected to satisfy them. An uneasy feeling is creeping over men's minds that the Gothic game is played out, and after ransacking all the countries of Europe for something new, their minds must inevitably revert to the necessity of trying to invent something more suitable to their wants, and better adapted to display the stage of perfection at which both the fine and mechanical arts have attained at the present day.

An experiment has already been made in the new church which the Oratorians have erected at Brompton, though not, it must be confessed, an entirely satisfactory one; but it was conducted under circumstances which were not likely to result in a successful issue. Mr. Gribble, the architect entrusted with the design, is a young man brought up in a different school, and who had never designed, much less erected anything of its class. After he received the commission, he was sent to Italy to examine the churches there, and learned his lesson as a schoolboy does; but it requires both thought and experience to assimilate the principles of an art before anything good can result from its practice, and this Mr. Gribble has not had. He has, nevertheless, produced a very fair specimen of its class-spacious, convenient, and thoroughly

well lighted--and when the coloured decorations, which it is admirably well adapted to display, are carried out, it will, on the whole, be one of the most satisfactory of London churches. It will when complete cost about one-half that must be expended on Sir Tatton Sykes' German Cathedral, though the sizes of the two are not materially different, and the Oratory Church would probably accommodate a larger congregation and with more convenience than the Votiv Kirche.

My conviction is, that the solution of the Liverpool difficulty lies in this direction, and that we must revert to the position in which architecture was left in the reign of Queen Anne, if we want to find a style in which progress is possible, and which can consequently be adapted to our wants and tastes. We have made immense strides. since Wren's days in our knowledge of the Classical styles and the principles which should guide us in designing in them, which is nowhere better exemplified than in the noble hall which occupies one side of St. John's churchyard, and if we only persevere in the same direction, something even better may be attained.

In order to explain my meaning, which can be better done by drawing than by mere words, I annex two woodcuts, which, though made for a very different purpose, will probably be sufficient. They are reduced to the scale of one hundred feet to one inch from drawings made to embody my criticisms on churches of that class, made in the fourth volume of my History of Architecture '3 (Modern styles). In it I attempted to embody the principal beauties I had remarked in making a thorough examination of the domical churches of Europe, while trying to avoid the defects which were too apparent in many of them. With what success I have done so others must judge.

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Though smaller than St. Paul's, in about the ratio of four to five, its floor is more spacious, and would accommodate a larger congregation for purposes of Protestant worship. The width of the nave and transepts of St. Paul's is forty feet, which is evidently too narrow, as leading up to a dome of more than one hundred feet in width, and of such inordinate height. In this design the proportions are sixty feet to one hundred, which is about that adopted in the best Italian examples, while the proportions as to height and width of the dome are those of St. Sophia at Constantinople, which is the most beautifully proportioned interior of any church yet erected for Christian purposes anywhere. The mode, too, of introducing the light by thirty-two or forty windows at the springing of the dome is, I conceive, more artistic than any yet adopted by any church in Western Europe. Even as shown in the woodcuts, it certainly would be a better design for an interior than either that of St. Paul's as executed, or as shown in

2 The Ritualists ought not to object to the adoption of the Classical style. Churches are built in it, and used for the celebration of the Mass and all the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic worship, in every country of Europe, and are conse quently appropriate to the most elaborate ceremonial they can desire.

A description of the design is embodied in an appendix to vol. iv.

the model; but that is not saying much. Another architect, with more time and thought than I could bestow upon it, may carry the improvement much further, and make, even on these lines, a very beautiful church.

If it were proposed to erect such a building in Liverpool, I would not recommend the central dome being surmounted by a false external one, like that of St. Paul's, which, though a wonderfully beautiful object in itself, is more or less a falsehood and a sham, and