Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/181

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In the Eighteenth Century. 151 Greenwich Hospital, the steeple of Bow Church, and the interior of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, are considered the best of Wren's other works. The western towers of West- minster Abbey were added after his design. 5. — Architecture in England in the Eighteenth Century. On Sir Christopher Wrens death, in 1723, his pupil Hawksmoor, and Vanbrugh were the most promising architects of the day ; but neither of them produced any- thing denoting high original genius. The principal works of Hawksmoor were St. George's, Bloomsbury, St. Mary's Woolnoth, in Lombard Street, and St. George's in the East; and of Sir John Vanbrugh, Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace. James Gibbs, an architect who rose into some eminence in the middle of the last century, built St. Martin' s-in-the- Fields, one of the handsomest churches of the day. The octastyle (eight-columned) portico of Corinthian columns is specially fine if considered merely as an accurate copy of a classic design ; but, of course, all originality of treat- ment is wanting. The Radcliffe Library at Oxford, also by Gibbs, is one of the best classical buildings in that city. Sir William Chambers and Sir Robert Taylor were the most celebrated architects of the reign of George III. They carried the imitation of classic and modern Italian buildings to the greatest extreme, displaying much erudi- tion and intimate acquaintance with the buildings of antiquity, but less of that imaginative genius which alone can give originality to a building. Sir William Chambers designed Somerset House and a great many other buildings