ARCHITECTURAL NOTES.
TnE . quality of perfection, by which is meant the entirely successful achievement of the end in view, is to some people almost irritating.. Such people argue quite soundly that perfection can only be attained if the wings of the human spirit are clipped. Hamlet and St. Paul's are neither of them perfect ; Persuasion and the Orangery at Kensington Palace are. But even granted that perfection can only be
• reached -in small fields, and with restricted aims, it is rare enough to be precious. It is this quality of perfection which distinguishes a new Telephone Exchange, erected from the designs of His Majesty's Office of Works in High Holborn between Chancery Lane and Kingsway. It will be said at once by some who have already noticed the building that there is nothing new or original about it, that it smacks of red tape, and that it is a dull compilation of time-honoured features. _Those who make . such sweeping criticisms have probably never tried to put together a compilation of this kind, and they .do not know how very difficult it is. But, granted that the building is official, and makes no attempt to be original, it must be admitted that it is singularly success- ful. The ground floor consists of a shop front flanked by two .doors, and the rest, of the elevation of rows of windows. All the ornament is concentrated round the window openings, particularly those of the second floor. The whole is crowned with a cornice and a steep roof pierced with _dormer windows. Such a description sounds infinitely depressing, and it would - be so if the ornament were not all beautifully designed, delicate yet lively, the projection of the cornice just right,
• and the proportion of solid to void carefully studied. The . whole 'building has the perfect manners of the now almost extinct grand seigneur who, even ff he has not learnt much lately, has forgotten nothing of what he learnt in his youth. It will be a hard and ugly world when there are none left in it who appreciate the quality of the urbane in building as
in other things. * • is
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