302
this parish is not, as generally supposed, in
the ward of Portsoken, and, in fact, is not in
the City at all, and it is, therefore, omitted
in the final return. If we divide the 600
acres by 117 we obtain an average of rather
over five acres to each parish; but many of
them are considerably beneath the average
size. ‘That such is the case may readily be
seen when we state that Cannon-street,
which is under half a mile in length, is situ-
ated in sixteen parishes, and the New Vic-
toria-street, which is far shorter, passes
through no less than fourteen parishes. As
an example of the wholesale destruction
recently brought about in some of the City
parishes by the new improvements, we can-
not do better than instance the formation of
Queen Victoria-street, the constructors of
which have annihilated the parish of S.
Mary Mounthaw. This parish figures
in these returns as—inhabited houses none,
ditto uninhabited two, total population nil.
In several other parishes the number of
empty houses is considerably in excess of
those which are tenanted. ‘Thus, in 8. Olave,
Silver-street, the population of 49 souls was
contained in 11 inhabited houses with 64 unin-
habited ones. InS. Matthew, Friday-street,
we find 70 individuals in 9 inhabited and 22
empty houses. These good folks have, we
believe, a parish church and an incumbent all
to themselves, and they share with All-
hallows-the-Less the honour of being the two
smallest City parishes, each having a church
for a population of 70, all told. In Allhallows-
the-Less the houses which are empty and
full are evenly balanced, there being 14 of
each, as is the case also in 8S. Andrew
Hubbard, JEastcheap, where there are
31 of each, and §. Martin Vintry 22.
Only seven parishes in the return are en-
tirely free from empty houses. Of course,
very many of the houses described as empty
are tenanted during the day, and are merely
locked up as warehouses at night; but it
seems strange that, whereas in the returns of
1861 there were only, as we have seen, 2,058
such houses, we have in 1871 3,205 unin-
habited, 64 of which were in course of erection.
Looking at the population of the individual
parishes, we find that only in eight cases is
there any increase, the total of which is only
329. ‘The greatest increase is in the parish
of S. Alban’s, Wood-street, amounting
to 69, and the smallest in the Middle
Temple, where is a gain of 8. The most
remarkable increase, however, is in the
parish of 8. Christopher-le-Stocks, which has
doubled in numbers. It comprises eight full
and two empty houses, according to
the enumerator, with 45 inhabitants,
against 23 in 1861. Now, as this parish
consists only of portions of the Bank of
England and the Royal Exchange, it is dif_i-
cult to say upon what principle it has been
made up into residences. The population on
the night of the Census, or the greater part,
at all events, neither resided nor slept (it is
to be hoped) in the parish, consisting, as it
did, chiefly of the soldiers sent to guard the
Bank.
In 109 parishes there has been a decrease,
since 1861, which amounts in the aggregate
to 37,495. The chief comparative decrease has
taken place in the before-mentioned parishes
of S. Mary Mounthaw (if two empty houses
ean be called a parish), which had, at the time
of the former census, 474 inhabitants, and
S. Olave, Silver-street, where there were
only, as we have seen, 49 residents against
527 in 1861. The largest actual loss occurs in
S. Botolph Without, Bishopsgate, where
there is a decrease of 5,462 in the ten years,
the numbers being 11,569 in 1861, against
6,107 in 1871: while in 8S. Giles Without,
Cripplegate, the most populous City parish,
there were 8,894 in 1871, against 13,498 in
1861, or a decrease of 4,604. The smallest
numerical decrease occurs in the parish of §.
Margaret Pattens, Rood-lane, which has only
one inhabitant less—namely, 103 against 104
in 1861. Many of the lesser parishes have
THE BUILDING NEWS. been in the last few years united for eccle- siastical objects, and for the management of the poor ; the number of parishes enumerated in the census of 1831 was 98 within, and 11 without the walls. If we glance at the rating of the different parishes we are struck by the wonderful variations which occur, evenin such as are contiguous. While the 26 inhabited houses and 21 empty ones in 8. George, Botolph-lane, pay a poor-rate of 1s. 3d. in the pound, the 22 full, and 21 empty houses in the parish of S. John the Baptist, Wal- brook, escape with atwopenny rate. The ves- trymen of 5. Martin Outwich expressed at their last meeting a strongfeeling of dissatis- faction at the great expense of keeping up the church, it being almost useless, as scarcely any one attends, and it occupies a large plot of valuable ground. A resolution was passed to this effect, and a copy ordered to be forwarded to the Bishop of London and to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. S. Martin’s consists of 22 houses with 137 in- habitants, with a poor-rate of 7d. in the pound, and a voluntary church-rate of 1d. It is high time for the passing of such a bill as is now before the House of Lords for the union of benefices, especially those of the City. ; The preliminary report of the Census Commissioners is really quite light read- ing, the returns are displayed in such an interesting form, and so many amusing particulars are given. ‘The descriptions of the various Census districts are truly graphic, and the language, if anything, almost too flowery. hus, in speaking of the metropolis, where the writer is evidently carried away by the magnificence of his theme, he begins by stating that ‘‘ London deserves the first place, as it is the living centre of the Empire where all its forces converge. It grows as the power of England grows; it is the emporium of capital, and its people are in communication by birth and blood, by trade and intelligence, with all the affiliated cities in these islands,” and concludes by stating that ‘it was prized by Shakespeare and Milton, but Cobbett nick- named it the Wen; Price called it one of the graves of mankind, and the State showed it no favour; yet here, unsurpassed by any city in health, full of riches, and rich above all things in men, in the year 1871 she stands by her river, her railways, her public edifices, her grand embankments, her magnificent bridges, the Queen City of the World.” ——— >» TURNER'S “LIBER STUDIORUM.”* HERE is at the present moment on foot one of the most important of those semi-private exhibitions or collections which the amateurs of the Burlington Fine Arts Club get up from time to time in their handsome new rooms in Sayile-row; and every lover of Turner, or of landscape, would do well to seek access to it,while he can. A still more important collection—one of the works of Holbein— is understood to be in immediate contemplation by the same body of gentlemen; and to the preparations for that the present assemblage of Turner illustra- tions will have to give place, it is most likely, almost before its existence has become known, Such an opportunity for studying the great master’s method and its results in one of the choicest and soundest efforts of his genius at its prime is not likely to recur. The reader knows how the famous series called “ Liber Studiorum,” partly suggested as to its idea by the ‘ Liber Veritatis” of Claude, was begun by Turner in the year 1807, and issued in a desultory way, five prints at a time, during the course of the next twelve years, up to fourteen numbers, comprising in all seventy prints and a frontispiece ; and how after the year 1819 the issue stopped, and the remaining thirty plates, twenty at least of which had been prepared, were never pub- lished. The method employed in the publication was this:—Of each subject Turner first made the draw- ing carefully and completely in sepia; next, as the preliminary stage of engraving it, he etched or got etched on the copper plate all the leading outlines of the design, and the outlines only, without shading or toning; finally, the shading and toning were filled in on the plate by the mezzotint process of
- From the Pall Mall Gazette.
Seah Tey Apri 12, 1872.
engraving, carried out sometimes by the artist's own hand, more commonly by engravers whom he em- ployed, but always with a perpetual and scrupulous supervision of the work, and repeated trials and improvements made under his own fastidious eye. The technical peculiarity lies in the combination of the processes of etching and mezzotint upon the same plate, and in the use of a warm brown-coloured ink in printing, to effect as complete a likeness as pos- sible to the original sepia drawing. The majority of these original drawings are at the South Kensington Museum for all the world to see; the engravings after them, in the various stages of their progress until deterioration begins (which was very early, after the twenty-fifth impression or so), are objects of eager competition among a zealous body of experts and collectors ; still more so the few engrayings that exist after those other drawings which were intended for the series, but, owing to its premature termina- tion, never actually included or published in it. What the gallery of the Burlington Club now con- tains, contributed from the collections of nine of its members, is—a selected series of the published prints of the ‘ Liber Studiorum” in the finest states that can be procured; examples of many of them in their instructive first or etched state, preceding the application of the mezzotint process ; and examples again of the intermediate or proof stages between the outline etching and the finished mezzotint, showing the successive alterations and retouchings which Turner, in his insatiable desire of perfection, either carried out with his own hand upon the plates at which he worked himself, or dictated with brush marks, penknife-scrapings, and written notes, to his staff of subordinate engravers. Some of the precious unpublished designs for the ‘‘ Liber” are also re- presented in the same attractive sequence. And there are added to the collection a dozen or so rare proofs from the other class of pure mezzotint plates which bear some analogy to those of the ‘ Liber” though they have nothing really to do with it; and rarer still, a few of the original drawings for the series which do not form part of the Kensington Museum collection. The value and interest of such a collection is obyious the moment its contents are described. The preparatory etchings—those of them which Turner did himself—are the most simple, palpable, and over- whelming testimony that exists to his draughtsman- ship—a daring, a precision, an unerring subtlety and significance of stroke in landscape drawing that have surely never had anything like their mateh. And then, as the light and shade and space and colour, the magic, the poetry from the inmost heart of nature, are added to the noble drawing and com- position, and come out more and more at each stage of the work’s progress, and you note, as you have here the means of noting, by what inspirations of knowledge, what science of art and nature, each point in the progress is won, you are carried away, and confess that if all the work of the master’s life were as good as the best of whatis here, there would be small hyperbole in all the honour which the last thirty years have piled upon him. At a time when everybody has just been hearing what he had the matter with his eyes in later life; at a time when reaction is rife in his regard (and seems justified by some rash doctrines tending to denounce all land- scape that does not strain after the effects in the pursuit of which this vast genius by-and-by lost itself and was baffled), it is well that one should have the chance of reminding oneself, by such a gathering of things masterly almost from end to end, how great a man Turner really was. — To criticise this inestimable collection as to par- ticulars would be endless work, since almost each subject at each of its stages offers ample suggestions of remark. Take the case of the design known as Raglan Castle, the original drawing for which, here exhibited, is one of the loveliest and subtlest Turner eyer made, but of which the outline etching was un- satisfactorily done for him, and see by what sur- prising efforts, during the progress of the plate, he has got it back, so that the print shall be a proper representation of the drawing, though in truth it remains a less perfect one than the plates in their finest states generally are. The most entirely satis- factory and valuable examples, from a technical point of view, are naturally those which were exe- cuted throughout—drawing, etching, and engraving, all three—by the master himself, such as the “ In- verary Pier,” the “Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey,” the famous “Calm” (here represented with unprecedented richness in seven successive states), the ‘‘Mer de Glace,” the ‘‘Calais Harbour,” the ‘“ Watercress Gatherers,” and a few more. Fortunately, criticism of particulars by us would be as impertinent as it is, we repeat, impossible to any purpose within our limits. Much of the most eloquent and least debateable expository work of
