Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/99

Rh with architectural accompaniments, fourteen Grecian temples, five pillars, one obelisk, and one fountain. Amidst such a profusion the committee made no decisive choice; but, in terms of their agreement, they selected the best three for the prize of 50 a-piece, and laid themselves open for fresh competition. Of the three designs thus distinguished above the rest, two were by eminent English architects, and the third by some individual who as yet had no name of his own, or was shy of bringing it into notice, for he signed himself John Morvo. Who was this John Morvo? It was no other than Kemp himself who had thus come timidly forward, and secured a safe retreat in case of failure. In five days he had drawn the plan, during which period he had suspended his work on the mode 1 of the Glasgow Cathedral, with which he was at this period occupied; and as soon as it was done he resumed his labour, apparently thinking no farther of a trial in which the chances were so hopelessly against him. In this mood he trudged home from Linlithgow on the evening of the day of decision, and on crossing his threshold was met by his wife, with news of the three lucky candidates, which she had learned from an acquaintance, and whose names she repeated. What a happy moment it must have been for both when the real John Morvo was revealed!

As the lists were now opened for a second trial, Kemp, animated by his late success, was ready to resume it with double ardour. His first plan had been a tall Gothic tower or spire, whose original conception and details ha had adapted from Melrose Abbey, a structure the lines of which had been for years impressed upon his memory, and of which, also, three drawings that he had executed in 1830 first brought him into notice as an architect in the highest sense of the term. Adopting his earlier design as the groundwork, he now produced such an improvement upon it as secured for it the choice of the whole committee, with the exception of only two dissenting voices one on the plea that Kemp was unknown, and the other that his plan was a plagiarism. The declaration, however, of the committee, that the "design was an imposing structure of 135 feet in height, of beautiful proportions, in strict conformity with the purity in taste and style of Melrose Abbey, from which it is in its details derived," and the attestation of Mr. Burn, who expressed to the committee "his great admiration of the elegance of Mr. Kemp's design, its purity as a Gothic composition, and more particularly the constructive skill exhibited throughout in the combination of the graceful features of that style of architecture, in such a manner as to satisfy any professional man of the correctness of its principle, and the perfect solidity which it would possess when built"—these testimonies sufficed, in the first instance, to show that Mr. Kemp's plan was a congenial inspiration, not a plagiarism, and that, if he was still unknown to the world, he ought to be so no longer. But who would now think of adducing such frivolous objections, with the testimony of the whole world against him? The Scott Monument has been visited from every land; engravings of it are diffused over the wide earth; and as long as it stands in its majestic and imposing beauty, the pilgrims of future centuries, who gaze upon it in silent admiration, will connect the name of its builder with the thought of him whom it commemorates.

Mr. Kemp had thus passed, by a single stride, from the condition of a humble mechanic to the highest rank in architectural talent and distinction; and having won such an elevation while life was still in its prime, a long perspective of professional achievements, and the rank and profit by which they would be