FIN E ARTS.
THE Royal Exchange Committee, we are glad to say, have done themselves honour, and vindicated the purity of their motives, by retracing the false step they had taken, and setting the competition on a fair footing : they have rescinded the injudicious resolution by which they assigned the task of preparing a design to the arbitrators ; and in ieu thereof, have commissioned Messrs. GWILT and Hanowica (Sir ROBERT SMIRKE having withdrawn) to reconsider the eight. select designs with reference to the possibility of their authors making such alterations in their respective plans as may render them eligible and practicable. Justice, it is to be hoped, will now be done to the corn. petitors according to their merits; and we trust the merchants will have an Exchange worthy of the first commercial city in the world.
A print of a design for the Royal Exchange, by Mr. JOHN D. Pam; that obtained the gold medal prize offered by the Royal Academy, has been sent to us. As a conception we cannot admire it, and it would seem impracticable in the space : it is an immense aggregation of columns, with a huge dome in the midst, as if the architect intended to make a bigger St. Paul's : the dome would shelter the merchants, but the formidable array of columns are of no use save to darken the windows of the building.
Apropos of the Royal Academy—Mr. HARDWICK is made an Associate : he is a thorough man of business, and well versed in his profession, but his claims to distinction on the score of taste and invention (using the term conventionally) are by no means preieninent : Goldsmith's Hall and the City Club-house are not remarkable either for refinement or orginality. Marylebone Church is the design of his father.
The appointment of Mr. COCKERELL, R. A., to the Professorship of Architecture, is the best that could be made : Mr. COCKERELL is erudite in his profession, and his researches in the classic remains of antiquity have obtained for him high rank as an archreologist ; he is not only a scholar, but an original thinker in his art. We anticipate great benefits not only to the Academy school, but to the science of architecture, from this appointment, for Mr. COCKERELL is a man of active mind as well as cultivated taste.
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