The Pictorial handbook of London : comprising its antiquities, architecture, arts, manufacture, trade, social, literary, and scientific institutions, exhibitions, and galleries of art : together with some account of the principal suburbs and most attractive localities ; illustrated with two hundred and five engravings on wood, by Branston, Jewitt, and others and a new and complete map, engraved by Lowry . ecessed and arched apertures. Thus, by a mostunhappy coincidence of three or four changes, all perhaps adoptedfor different reasons, everything that could contribute to the appa-rent solidity
The Pictorial handbook of London : comprising its antiquities, architecture, arts, manufacture, trade, social, literary, and scientific institutions, exhibitions, and galleries of art : together with some account of the principal suburbs and most attractive localities ; illustrated with two hundred and five engravings on wood, by Branston, Jewitt, and others and a new and complete map, engraved by Lowry . ecessed and arched apertures. Thus, by a mostunhappy coincidence of three or four changes, all perhaps adoptedfor different reasons, everything that could contribute to the appa-rent solidity, depth of relief, or quantitative contrast of light andshade, has been either removed or greatly reduced ; and the loss ofgrandeur by these means all conspiring together, particularly in theeast front, is hardly conceivable by those who have not much con-sidered it. The same front has further suffered a most importantdeterioration in the reduction of its terrace or basement to a merequay, which in the design was graced not only with mouldings anda parapet, but with buttresses as numerous as those above. Forwant of some such scale, the eye cannot measure or obtain anythinglike a correct appreciation of its length, and consequently is greatlydeceived in all the other dimensions. The same effect arises aswhen a miniature model is placed on a plain solid block, which PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BUILDINGS, 735. THE NEW HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. always renders it more diminutive. The contrast, too, between theextreme plainness of the one and fritter of the other, is too first designed, they presented a due gradation of increasingornament, from the water to the sky-line; but now, two distinct 736 LONDON. bands most oppositely treated, the lower having been as muchstarved as the upper has been (we were about to say over-enriched,but that is not the fact) overcharged with a deceptive substitute forrichness*. Many persons consider this front too low for its length. If theterrace had forme
Size: 1305px × 1914px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookidpictorialhan, bookyear1854
