merical equilibrium in the legislature between the slave and nonslave-holding states a subject for the ingenuity of American statesmen.* How soon the balance may again be swayed, or, as M. Chevalier thinks, permanently affected, by the weighty addition of Texas to the slave scale, depends upon a resolution of Congress, not likely long to pause from any delicacy to the wretched neighbour who apes the gesticulations of her republican model without the dignity of power. We know not what Mr. Cooper will say to the recent message from the President of South Carolina, and still less what Mr. Van Buren will reply to it; but Mr. Cooper need not be surprised if some of the lookers-on in Europe should opine with Captain M'Turk, in St. Ronan's Well,-If these sweetmeats are passing between them, it is only the two ends of a handkerchief that will serve their turn.' There is certainly, however, much truth in the following passage:

-

The short period from which our independent existence dates furnishes no argument against us, as it is not so much time, as the changes of which time is the parent, that tries political systems; and America has undergone the ordinary changes, such as growth, extension of interests, and the other governing circumstances of society, that properly belong to two centuries, within the last fifty years.'-let. xxviii.

Mr. Cooper's reputation as a writer is so well established in Europe that our further recommendation would be superfluous to assist the popularity of his present work. With us, it has performed its office of entertainment and instruction. In America, we hope its reception may be better than his own estimate of the wide-spread corruption of the reading classes there would entitle us to expect. More serious, he is not unfrequently as severe as Mrs. Trollope, whom he admits to have spoken many truths. To the writer, whether native or foreign, caricaturist or philosopher, who shall succeed in removing any of the defects acknowledged to have hitherto accompanied the progress of American civilization, that country will owe an obligation. If it be true, which we do not affirm, that the individual who places his feet on the front of a box in the theatre of New York is now rebuked by a cry of Trollope!' from the pit, that lady already deserves a civic

crown.

* See Note 33, Chevalier, vol. i. Appendix.

2 M 2

ART.

ART. IX.-Transactions of the Institute of British Architects. Vol. I., Part I. London, 1836.

IT T was our good fortune last autumn to escape from the feverish excitement and moral tension of this vast metropolis, from the hurry and fret of business, the glut of pleasure, the satiety of delight, the weariness of politics, and the exhausting duties of our critical function, into that favoured corner of our fortunate island, the West of England; we lingered a happy month, alternately in green glens, and on noble mountains; sometimes in the rich parklike interior, at others on the sunny coasts of the glorious sea, in those sheltered nooks and inlets, where the shelving woods sweep down into the laughing waves, where the myrtles and geraniums bloom, and where cold winds, adverse to life,' seldom blow. We wandered around the delicious neighbourhood of Exeter, that time-honoured capital, which for so many centuries has looked proudly over the sweet valley, which its clear Exe clothes with perpetual verdure, winding into the vast ocean through a bosom of beauty, threading hill and dale, wood and meadow, by pleasant hamlets and lordly castles. There are few objects of a peaceful, quiet nature more exquisite than these scattered villages of Devonshire. They are truly agricultural; unmarred by the disproportioned factory, unincumbered with an overgrown, unhealthy, discontented population, they lie concealed amidst their pretty gardens, their fresh pastures and ruddy orchards, or crown the broad upland, infusing an air of life into the rich, arable, and woodland scenery around.

We mingled with the peasantry-the simple, uncorrupted, obliging, warm-hearted peasantry-happy in their state of industrious independence, respectful to their ancient and kind landlords, loyal to their king and country, and true to the religion of their forefathers. We had laden our small portmanteau, in accordance to our studious habits, with a goodly supply of books, to dissipate the ennui of unusual leisure, interrupted avocations, and the fancied insufficiency of rural recreation. We little dreamed that our studies would be confined to the book of nature and the beauties of the creation, to the rising sun, the silent moon, the incense breath of the morn, the perfume of the newly-turned furrow, the fragrance of the wild flower, the aroma of the thymy, heathy, sweet-aired moors, the invigorating breeze of the bracing sea-to the multitudes of out-of-door delights concentrated in these happy regions, which lure the student from his lonely desk, and forbid him to waste his precious evenings over the lamp

'Quorsum pertinuit stipare Platona Menandro?"

What

What booted it to us to have sallied forth on our travels with Walsh's 'Constantinople,' Leake's' Northern Greece,' Humboldt's 'Kawi-sprache,' Sismondi's Etudes sur l'Economie Publique,' and the last corrected and enlarged edition of Mr. McCulloch's very valuable Commercial Dictionary?' The slighted tomes made their grand tour, in imitation of many of our fashionable travellers, like a trunk, and in one they returned from whence they were brought, unread, uncut, in no wise altered beyond the wear and tear incidental to locomotion. One only shared a better fate that of which we have prefixed the title to this article.

It is a matter, we think, of national congratulation that the architects of Great Britain should at length, though late, have formed themselves into this association. We hope it will eventually have the effect of promoting a union, a mutual co-operation, and a good fellowship among themselves—a more general communication of inventions, ideas, plans, and designs, which must tend to foster a higher, more correct, and classical taste in the important works committed to their charge; which are, be it remembered, both durable memorials, and always before the eye of the world. We trust, under happier auspices, they may remove the unfavourable comparison not unfrequently instituted by foreign critics between the great architectural monuments of modern date among the continental nations and those of our own country.

We cannot shut our eyes to the humiliating fact, that architecture, the chief of arts, (as the name implies,) has never flourished in our British Isles as it has done in Greece and Italy, those favoured climes of taste and design. It would be a long and an ungracious task to point out the causes of this inferior degree of success, in a matter of daily domestic comfort-in a branch of the arts, which is so well calculated to display the pride of the monarchy, the dignity of the church, the wealth of the noble and the merchant, the skill and invention of the most mechanical and constructive of nations. We will just suggest, among some of the causes, the early liberty of the subject in England, which, by conferring a security of property, generated that love for comfort and private possessions, so peculiar to Englishmen, in preference to merging the individual in magnificent public institutions;-the limited power of the monarch-the distribution of national wealth by the representatives of the peoplethe jealousy always displayed by a powerful aristocracy as to the power and affluence of the church, which in its most palmy times papacy never attained the full-blown pomp and splendour of the Spanish or Italian;-the iconoclastic simplicity of a Protestant church, a conscientious opponent to the carver and sculptor;and finally, the influence of a climate, damp and cold—of stinted

of

suns

suns and lengthened winters, in which lofty halls, spacious apartments, vast windows, open corridors and porticoes-all those gorgeous appurtenances and ornaments in which architecture delights to revel-so far from tending to render indoor existence happy, would be the instruments of discomfort, disease, and uneasiness. Towards the latter end of the last century, when a better architectural feeling appeared to be growing upon us, there came the curse of war, that greatest of all impediments to the peace-loving arts, the welfare and happiness of mankind. It nipped the opening bud with odious taxes and fiscal restrictions, narrowing our windows, defining the size of brick by law, declaring war against all picturesque projections as contrary to act of parliament, increasing the expense of raw material of every kind, thwarting the manufacturer with duties and excisemen, and rendering it imperative on the bulk of the people to consult economy in form, size, and ornament; fostering the melancholy dullness of Baker Street; creating those tasteless piles of bald-faced barracks, manufactories, prisons, palaces, and penitentiaries, which would render another Lisbon earthquake hardly a national calamity in England. Something, too, must be attributed to the unfortunate position in which those who profess the liberal profession of architects are placed in this country-we allude to the tradesman-like mode of remuneration by a per-centage on the whole expenditure. It is difficult to conceive a system more degrading to a gentleman of education and of feeling, or one more open to painful suspicions of underhand meddlings with subordinate tradesmen. It seems to hold out a premium to increased outlay and extravagance, and has induced that universal and degrading opinion of an architect's estimate, that it can be as little depended upon as an epitaph. Thus a body of honourable, highly educated men submit to a reflection on their word and integrity, implied in such a doubt, which they would not put up with for an instant under any other circumstances, and are yet compelled to do so in a matter of the most vital importance to their character, credit, and well-doing in their profession. If the per-centage system be unhappily to be continued, we would suggest that it should be taken on the estimate given in rather than on the eventual expense. The most unexceptionable honorarium, however, would be, as in the case of so many other liberal professions, a fixed definite sum for a certain specified performance.

We abstain from following a train of reflections which would lead us away from our present object. We wish to call the attention of our readers to the very able papers in the Transactions before us, on the subject of a newly introduced mode of building, termed concrete. During our sojourn in the West of England,

we

we have been struck with the great prevalence of a cognate method of construction, which is much confined to Cornwall and Devonshire, and known immemorially by the local name of Cob, It has never been so thoroughly investigated as it appears to us to deserve, and as it necessarily will be of some interest and, we hope, of instruction and entertainment to our Devonian readers, towards whom we entertain an especial good will, we propose to dedicate a few pages to the examination of the history, antiquity, and mode of preparation of this most primitive composition, this earliest effort of human ingenuity, which is hardly sufficiently honoured in its own counties, and very little known beyond the confines of the West of England.

Nature has there been so bountiful in flower and fruit, corn and cattle, that reasoning by analogy from what occurs in other equally favoured countries-it was to be expected that the inhabitants might become comparatively careless as to the exercise of their bodily and mental energies, and might prefer the grosser enjoyments of a fat land to that never-cloying banquet of intellectual food, which it is the peculiar object of our literary labours to provide.

The character and appearance of the cottages do not imply any unusual advance in architectural science. They are generally composed of mud or cob; for the terms are nearly convertible. They are formed out of the earth on which they stand, and too often appear to be rapidly returning to their original element.

As the mode of building is rude and inartificial, so the exterior is too often untidy and dilapidated. The line of wall is seldom true, either horizontally or perpendicularly. The building bulges out and swags in every direction, and is frequently seamed with gaping cracks, which convey to the beholder the most unpleasing feeling in architecture, that of decay and insecurity. The earthy material is either uncovered in the deformity of nakedness, or coated with a coarse plastering, and daubed over with a wash of lime, which propriety of language will not permit us to call white. This dingy epidermis is seldom perfect-damp, frost, and infinite neglect occasion it to peel off in flakes, and to leave the red raw material exposed beneath. There is little, as regards construction, calculated to give pleasure to any eye save that of the artist, who revels in the broken and uncertain outline, and in the colours of poverty.

Our first impressions were rendered more striking, from having passed many of the happy days of our youth in the north of Africa, and in the southern and more Arabian provinces of Spain. We now beheld in Devonshire cottages and villages, which from great similarity of material, construction, and colour, transported