Mr. Worthen has given us in this book a most judicious and complete compilation of the best works on the various branches of "practical" drawing,—having, with real thoughtfulness and knowledge of what was needed in a handbook, condensed all the most important rules and directions to be found in the works of MM. Le Brun and Armengaud on geometrical and mechanical drawing, Ferguson and Garbett on architectural, and Williams, Gillespie, Smith, and Frome, on topographical drawing.
It includes a very full chapter of geometrical definitions, a complete and minute description of all the implements of mechanical drawing, and solutions of all the useful problems of geometrical drawing,—a part of the work especially needed by practical mechanics, and hitherto to be found, so far as we know, only in the form of results in the pocket-books of tables, or in the lengthy and elaborate treatises of the heavy cyclopædias, or works specially devoted to the topic.
There is an admirably condensed treatise on the mechanical powers, containing all the problems of use in construction, with tables of the mechanical properties of materials. In mechanical drawing there are directions for the most complicated drawings, going up to the last improvements in the steam-engine. The same completeness of elementary instruction marks the section on architectural drawing, though in this department we should have liked a fuller and better-chosen series of examples, especially of domestic architecture,—an Italian villa planned by Mr. Upjohn being the only really tasteful and appropriate dwelling-house given. The designs by Downing, rarely much more than commodious residences with great neatness rather than artistic beauty, stand very well for that style of building which consults comfort and attains it, but it is a misuse of words to call them artistic. Picturesque they may be at times, but often the affectation of external style puts Downing's designs into the category of Gothic follies and Grecian villanies, in which the outside gives the lie to the inside,—emulating in wood the forms of stone, giving to cottages on whose roof snow will never lie three inches deep all the pitch a Swiss châlet would need. We are especially sorry to see a plate of Thomas's house in Fifth Avenue, New York,—the most absurd and ludicrous pile of building material which can be found on the avenue,—and to find such evidence of taste as is shown by the editor's commendation of it as "uniting richness and grandeur of effect," "admirably suited," etc. Mr. Worthen, however, generally abstains from much expression of opinion as to styles or the respective merits of works.
His examples of the steam-engine are nearly all from American models, and include the oscillating engines of the "Golden Gate," the last important advance in the construction of the marine engine; for, although the form of the oscillator has been known for years, it had never been applied to marine uses until the success of the "Golden Gate" proved its applicability to the heaviest engines. The examples of architectural details and ornaments are copious, and represent all styles with great fairness; but there is much confusion in the numbering of the plates, so that it is a problem at times to find the illustration desired.
The tinted illustrations, though answering their proposed purpose, are a disgrace to the art of lithotinting,—coarse, ineffective, and cheap. The publishers, we think, would have profited by a little more liberality in this respect.
