210 THE BUILDING NEWS. Marca 15, 1872. [n= ee eee!
of the cottage, as France is of the chateau, | the dictum of those who insist that its breadth
Germany of the castle, and Italy of the palace
and villa. A French or an Italian cottage is
a sight unknown; there are plenty of little
houses in both regions, but neither language
contains the equivalent of our dear domestic
word. All this applies to summer, when the
flower-beds are bright, the fountains refresh-
ing, the trees in full foliage, the vases shower-
Inge over with flowers; but what of winter?
Wothing more cheerless than a frozen fountain
or an empty urn, or black beds of earth, not-
withstanding that we may cheat ourselves by
mosaicing the pathways into a semblance of
gaiety. Of course, for those who can afford
to have gardens expressly laid out for the
barren season of the year, much may be done
with ivy-covered walls, yew and holly hedges,
élusters of evergreens, spaces spread with
eoloured sands, variegated shrubs, stone-crop,
Christmas roses, and so forth; but we have
little to do with this section of the subject.
Pavilions—strictly summer-houses—are out
of place in a winter garden, as are also seats
of every description, even in southern climates.
We therefore go on to bridges, which, again
quoting Mr. Arthur Hughes, are too often the
works of mere engineers or ordinary archi-
tects ; but not of garden architects, careful
to render them a part of the landscape—part
of the composition, indeed, regarded, as a
garden should be regarded, in the light
of a picture. It is comparatively easy
to introduce a torrent bridge over a deep
eleft in the earth, but exceedingly difficult
to construct one over a wide, slow, fluctuat-
ing meadow-stream, sometimes a river, and
sometimes only a marsh, yet in many large
parks this difficulty has been triumphantly
met by long approaches, gradual ascents, a
causeway joining the bridge at either end ;
no very great solidity—since the -traflic over
such structures is never heayy—the least con-
eeiyable amount of ornament, no carving,
«not even on the key stones ;” by all means
no lamps, because gardens are for the day
and not for the night ; but richly-planted ends
to screen the water, and finally, no wood
and no iron work, but lightly arched stone.
Tron rails, supplementing a parapet, are
simply hideous, and belong to that which we
are disposed to call the market-garden style.
It is impossible to reconcile them with any
beauty of building, or with the summer grace
of green and brilliance which is the charm
of agarden. The Italians are great masters
of this bridge-building art in pleasure-
grounds, whereas the French, as at Fontain-
bleau, generally stunt their structures, be-
sides preferring pools to streams, which
speedily converts the stone, as well as the
water, into a mass of unwholesome green.
Of course, there are lakes on many estates,
but with proper care they can always be kept
as pellucid as a mountain rivulet. It may
be added, on this topic, that timber bridges
are permissible in ‘* wildernesses” and wooded
localities. But nothing equals the crenellated
Gothie structure, without piercings of the
parapet, except slight edifices of rustic de-
sign, for foot use only, merely serving to
earry ona path ; and here the design may be
fantastic. But, apropos, those who construct
bridges have frequently to outline lakes, and
can this be called building? Certainly so;
for the walls of the lake, properly designed,
are as much architecture as the arches
that pass between them. Nature assists a
great deal with the level; but art exca-
vates, embanks, piles up islets, guides the
flow of the springs, opens soft bays on the
margin for the deer to drink at and the kine
to cool themselves in—whither, too, Landseer
and Cooper and Cuyp might bring their
easels—cultivates a bed of rushes, prepares a
dam, arranges deceptive turns of the perspee-
tive, and cclours the miniature coast with
flowering plants, breaking up all into such
vistas as Addison describes in his ‘+ Vision of
Mirza.” A lake in a garden, or rather, park,
ought to have no discernible limit—that is,
as to length. It is not easy to coincide with
can at every point be similarly concealed—
an impossibility, in our opinion, unless the
elegance of a broad, brilliant stretch of water
were sacrificed for the sake of an illusion.
By all means, let there be a boathouse in the
bay—not too refined in its structure; with a
touch of improvisation about it; neat, clean,
and pure, but not of foreign design ; some-
thing like the boat itself, shaped for a special
use, with a picnic appearance; unless the
lord of the domain has been inspired by those
foolish cockneys who launch Venetian gon-
dolas on English artificial lakes where there
is neither water nor atmosphere for a gondola
to live in properly, and build belvederes as
though they dwelt in the land of Juliet. An
English park is not an Alpine valley: still
less is it a lagoon of the Adriatic. We must
conform to the exigencies of the country, and
not expect to change them either by building
“ Devil’s Bridges,” which are suited only to
scenes of vast ruggedness, or by renting from
water companies the materials of sham Tivoli
cascades, and hollowing out grottoes wherin
our humanity only feels bored and shivers.
These suggestions may not be without their
use for those who have not had opportunities
of studying the standard works on the sub-
ject, or of comparing, as it has been a signal
pleasure for us to do, the styles of gardens and
garden building among various nations of
Europe. But there is one garden to which
we haye not alluded, and itis the Russian.
When the competition at Florence takes place
next spring may we hope for some examples
of this phenomenon, usually composed of a
glass-house, a hut, and some erysanthemums.
ieee’
COLOURING PLANS
T is much to be wished that architects
could devise some uniform system on
which to colour their drawings. We do not
now refer to perspectives, which, when
coloured at all, show rather too much uni-
formity. The mechanical art of tinting views
to please committees has become consider-
ably more mechanical than it need be, and
we should not be surprised to see it super-
seded by the publication of chromo-litho-
graphed sheets, with a sky at top, men,
women, and horses at the bottom, and a
blank for the building in the middle. ‘The
colouring which, on the contrary, we should
be glad to have regulated by rules, is that of
working drawings: plans, sections, elevations,
and details. The great object aimed at here
is to prevent mistakes: to make the quantity
surveyor, the builder, the clerk of works, and
the foreman clearly understand the architect’s
intention. In the present state of things
almost every office has its own traditions on
the subject: In one, stonework is represented
by yellow, in another by brown, in a third
by blue. Brick in section may be lake or
carmine or Indian red: in elevation it may
assume an indescribable multitude of dif-
ferent hues. Fir timber, by the custom of
one office, is tinted gamboge, by that of an-
other with burnt sienna, by that of a third
with Vandyke brown, while these two last
colowrs are not uncommonly reserved to dis-
tinguish oak. Cast iron is most frequently
indicated by neutral tints ; so is slate, so, in
elevations, is glass, so is lead, and so, not un-
frequently, is plaster. That neutral tint may,
indeed, be used with a difference, but the
difference is small, while in faint washes it
disappears altogether. That grand layer of
neutral tint, in the shape of dirt, with which
drawings in actual use soon get overlaid,
obliterates all minor distinctions. if the
form of a detail were not a better guide to
its material than the colour often is, mistakes
would be the rule instead of the exception:
practical men, however, know what to expect,
and soon learn to rely on experience and
common sense.
It is, perhaps, in the process of taking out
quantities that a good colour-system would
be most valuable. The builder, or the work-
man, has time to study the drawings, and
opportunity to ask questions when he feels un-
certain ; the surveyor very frequently has
not much of either. An important structural
detail, again, makes itself looked for when
the work is actually proceeding. There is no
doing without it, and however obscurely it
may be shown, it can hardly escape the keen
serutiny which, as the case may be, is seeking
proof either of its presence or its absence.
No such impossibility of proceeding calls the
attention of the quantity-taker to his lapses :
he may omit the foundations to his walls, or
the piers to his arches, or the ties to his roof,
and the first. and only sign of their absence
will be the absence of a certain amount of
eash from the contractor’s pocket. It is,
therefore, very desirable that every item in-
cluded in the contract should be put clearly
before him; that the details of each trade
should be not merely shown, but shown con-
spicuously. To this end we think that a
greater diversity of colours might be advan-
tageously used. There is too much prefer-
ence in ordinary practice for browns
and grays, colours which may be use-
ful enough in imitating the materials to be
dealt with, but which are not sufficiently
marked or distinctive to stand for them in a
conventional scale. Conventional, to a greater
or less extent, the scale must evidently be.
It is impossible in a drawing of eight or ten
feet to an inch to distinguish wood and stone
and metal from each other by their actual hues
The space they occupy is too small ; an area
the size of a pin’s head must be brightly
tinted if it is to show at all, and still more
so if it is to be distinguished by its tint from
other areas not much bigger. It, therefore,
becomes a question whether positive colours
have not been for this purpose unduly
neglected. Cobalt blue and emerald green
might, we think, be taken into use with ad-
vantage, to supersede some of the brown and
j neutral shades which have at present to do
double work. The only apparent objec
tion is the misleading effect of such colours
in elevations ; but it may beaquestion whether -
an architect will in any case be wise in judg-
ing by elevations alone of the future effect of
his work. -
——_———_
THE PROXIMATE PRINCIPLES OF
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN.—IL.
(Continued from page 127.)
(pee natural order of ideas which occupy
the mind in the process of design I
have endeavoured to point out, with a view
of indicating, as far as possible, a rational
mode of procedure in place of that vague,
indefinable mode, or that presentiment of
fancy, which partial education, association,
or bias too often determines. ‘Take, for ex-
ample, a window. What should be the
rational process in the design of one? First,
there is the simple abstract idea of light
which has to be admitted. This may be
regarded as intuitive, the connection between
an aperture and light being immediately cog-
nisable. orm is the next step—that form
which is best suitable to admit light viewed,
firstly, in an abstract sense without reference
to structure or material, and, secondly, with
regard to this connection. Whether we
consider the agency of light on the emission
or the undulatory theory, the fact that light
is propagated in right lines through space
or every homogeneous medium is acknow-
ledged, and air and glass are the two
media which the architect has to consider.
We know, too, that it is propagated
through the air in all directions by its
extreme tenuity or vibratory motion of
the luminiferous ether, If intercepted by
opaque bodies the rays change their
direction, or, in optical language, are either
reflected or refracted. ‘Through these agen-
cies, and the ordinary state of our atmosphere,
light is pretty equally diffused. Atthe same
time, we are obliged to consult the direct
source of our light—the solar beams, and
