our age. And I do so with pleasure, for two reasons: first, because they are indications of a new spirit which may become national; secondly, because they are characteristic, so far, of our social condition.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that there is a manifest change in the desires for a better architecture, and those desires are gradually yet quickly giving themselves expression in action. We cannot walk the streets of London, especially those parts which are naturally the scenes of greatest activity, without being struck by the greater elevation, mass, and even elegance, which characterise not merely new buildings, but those which replace older and ruder edifices, known by a name which at once is antithetic to all ideas of beauty—warehouses. They have become streets of industrial palaces, contrasting most favourably with the rectilinear streets which still array, in stiff and cold monotony, the dwellings of the rich.
Indeed it must be owned that the architectural movement of London is not among these. With a few exceptions of noble mansions newly built, we more frequently see, especially in a square, a house of ample dimensions, if not of elegant form, being mercilessly cut into two, or further subdivided, than anything fair and great springing up.
The many new streets in Westminster, and near Hyde Park and Kensington, present rows of splendid looking houses, which may be well characterised as imposing, for they receive much of their outward grandeur from their stucco clothing; nor is there either the solidity of construction, or the character
