Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/56

 36 Sloan's Architectural Review and Builders' Journal. [Jul and book-plate testify, an ancient her- aldic escutcheon, which he could, if he chose, though he did not, have honestly ■ quartered with other coats proving his descent from the royal lines of England and Scotland. Oliver Cromwell, the Roundhead, sneered at by the cavaliers of the time, as a plebeian brewer, could have similarly shown his near cousin- ship to Charles the First, and conse- quent descent from the same kings and princes of England and Wales.* Coats of arms on book-plates, seals and car- riages are constantly used, and ever will be, by many of our most unostentatious citizens, descendants of the persecuted immigrants of good families, who led the original colonists of North America. So, then, it seems, that Heraldry will always retain some charms for the curious, at least ; and may as well be studied by inquiring youths, or gentle- men of leisure, as many other things, which have lost their swaying influence upon the destinies of the earth. There now arises the question, "What has all this to do with modern archi- tecture ?" A great deal. These emblems of the old worthies were lately found to ~jti a most befitting ornament to the gothic halls of the new British Parlia- ment House. Heraldry numbers among its many figures very nearly two hun- dred different styles of crosses. What more appropriate, if a congregation thus determined, than to embody a selection from these on carved shields, used as corbels, or the apparent resting points of gothic arch-mouldings, or supposed to be hung, as insignia of the church militant, in the panels of the walls ? Or, cacy of privileged coaditiou. The best specimens of the English nation are mostly derived from the gentry, be- cause they are the cultured division of the inhabitants. This argues nothing for blood, because the nobles propor- tionally are not equal to the gentlemen, nor are the higher nobility and the princes relatively to compare with the barons. Our own educated classes, varying as to special families, from our happy preference of gavel-kind, or equal distribution, to entail, it descent by primogeniture, are by fight and social rule the highest of the nation, but it is by virtue of their innate faculties improved by acquisition. Superior organization prepares for superior education, but this organization may occur iu any class of society. The inutility of the Europeau systems is seen in the fact that no other Cromwell, much less Washing- ton, has ever been produced. suppose a gentleman of romantic taste, not caring particularly for his own coat- of-arms, even as a water-color in a glass frame, and yet willing to acknowledge eminence in others: who should hinder him from displaying, upon his library wall, or, better yet, in his stained-glass windows, the escutcheoned emblems of the United States, of his own State, Governor Winslow, Captain John Smith, William Penn, George Washington, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Beau- mont, and Fletcher, Dryden, Somerville of the Chase, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and William Beckford, the author of the Caliph Vathek, the young Englishman, who wrote, in a marvellously few hours, that novel in la, langue Francaise, since universally allowed to be classic, the third time only that that feat was ever accomplished in French by any for- eigner ; and who had, immediately after, a six-weeks brain fever for his pains ; who is known, moreover, to all lovers of architecture, as the planner, builder, and resident of Fonthill Abbey, Wilts, England, — the sale of whose articles of virtu occupied the attention of the Lon- don public during most of the summer of 1823* — to give which striking con- ception of architect, James Wyatt, its proper effect in the landscape, he actu- ally pulled down, in 180?, save one wing, afterwards known as the Pavilion, the spacious and noble mansion erected, from 1T56 to 1760, by his father, Alder- mand Beckford, many of whose ceilings were painted by Casali the Italian, and which cost altogether £150,000. From these and other considerations, and as a branch of rather out-of-the- wa}^ science, we, the junior editor, pro- pose to give, with every number of this periodical, an illustrated paper on Her- aldry, which we hope will engage the favorable attention of readers and per- haps facilitate, or even felicitate some younger student's research. Neale, Loudon, 1824.
 * The writer does not wish this to be accepted in advo-
 * Graphical illustrations of Fonthill Abbey, by J. 1'.