once occupied by the parts, the 'date and consistency of style, the character of the doors, windows, and pillars, the richness and propriety of the various ornaments; and if these be approved you would seldom hear any remark respecting the figure and proportions of the whole. The propriety and richness of the details would almost ensure the critic's encomiums, even when the general figure of the building and the proportion of its divisions are deformity itself: the tower, perhaps, meanly slender, or clumsily broad, the body thick and heavy, or elongated like a high wall. In short, it appears as if the Gothic style were considered as almost exempted from the criterion, which is the sine qua non in Grecian art. Now it would be difficult, I think, Sir, to assign an adequate reason for the disregard of that important requisite proportion of the whole in the one style, which we so highly estimate in the other. It is true that the simplicity in the form of a Grecian church makes a deviation from the just proportion more conspicuous; but, although there is a greater latitude for variety of contour in the Gothic style, there must be in all the forms adopted one just standard of proportion, from which every deviation is a real detriment, whether it be regarded or not. It is, probably, this want of attention to contour in our old churches (for it is not disregarded in new erections) which has caused what appears to me to be a great defect, in most of them. I will now endeavour to explain what I mean by this charge, and, as I have never heard any one make the same complaint, I must defend the singularity of my judgment by an appeal to some general principles of the beautiful in form.

Officiating many years since in a church, which I generally approached from the due south, the long side of the building was often strongly marked against the sky, ex.hibiting (as most churches do) this step-like figure on the horizon. It struck

me that this figure was a singular deviation from all that we in general deem symmetrical in art. It appears to be in absolute repugnance to that partiality which we always manifest for the ir

regularly pyramidal in any single group, and a building consisting of parts forms a group. Nay, so natural is this partiality that we require something of this contour (divested of course of all apparent artifice) even in objects which are moveable. What painter designing a single group, whether of people or cattle, would not dispose them in this figure well concealed? And if in moveable objects, subject to all variety of positions, we love this arrangement, can it be questioned but that it is more indispensable to the real beauty of a group that is stationary? In applying this principle to our churches the widest scope should of course be allowed for the great difference in the various classes of those buildings. In the highest class, the cathedral, this principle is exhibited triumphantly. In our glorious Gothic cathedrals, and in the two noblest Grecian buildings in. the world, St. Peter's and St. Paul's churches, the irregularly pyramidal is seen in absolute perfection. Now it is by no means desirable that churches of inferior character should resemble little cathedrals. There would not only be an exceeding poverty of design in such limitation of form, but the effect (when sometimes seen) is bad just in proportion to the diminutive size of the building. But this figure being thus monopolized by the aristocracy among the churches, it follows that we have no resource in the construction of the rest, but to deviate from this figure as little as we can, and this is all the novelty that my proposed principle can claim, and not even that, for many churches are built according to the plan I would recommend. I contend for is that it should be universal. I would in no case have a chancel lower than the body or nave of the church. Let us again view the unsightly figure made by this depression of the height of the chancel. The height and the weight are all on one side. It is as if a painter were to delineate a family group according to their stature. In a few old churches (as East Ham, in Essex,) there is a second chancel, and another step in the contour, thus. A person must have

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