TASTE OF PUBLIC BODIES.
• Tavi,stoek Hotel, Jaly 1856.
Sin—The other day, I dropped into Westminster Abbey at morning ser- vice. In this metropolitan cathedral, to which every foreigner resorts to hear the class of music on which we pride ourselves, I found six adult voices, of no extraordinary individual power, overpowered by those of sixteen voices ill-assorted and some of them very rough. In the antiphonal parts, the bass, tenor, and alto, had each one representative, and the treble had eight. The organist showed mercy occasionally and overpowered all. Now, whatever may be said on the subject of cathedral service and its use- fulness, if it be done surely it ought to be done well.
Stepping out of the Abbey, the tall and lean tower erected by Sir Charles Barry to indicate the time of day presented itself; with a clock-face as largo as a turn-table, and coloured blue and 'white, resembling, in the shades, the old Dutch tiles with mermaids and such like monsters on them, with which our ancestors used to surround their fire-places. I blow the architectural difficulty of harmonizing the lines within what must be a circle with the very perpendicular lines of that vast collection of niches and statuary; but surely the rose-windows of' the Abbey, within a stone's throw, might have suggested something more congenial than this copy of the old willow pattern. Well, I got into a steamer at Westminster Bridge stairs, and started for the City. The simple grandeur of the facade of Somerset House, in spite of its defects, is always striking, and more especially at high-water ; but what has modern taste or management done here The colour and tone are grey, and, notwithstanding the smoke which has so long assailed it, very good. At each end of the terrace are small lodges or pavilions, of uniform charac- ter and colour ; upon these have been raised chimneys painted a kind of drab or green-tea colour, surmounted by scarlet chimney-pots of every variety of invention. The centre of the front is, as you well know, crowned by an en- riched pediment, which again supports a very paltry, dome. What has been the matter with the pediment, 1 know not ; but it has been handed over to the painter, who has daubed it over with the same dirty drab. The top of the building is covered with the same scarlet chimney-pots. Now, if they must paint the stone-work, surely they might see that the colounnan matched his material with the rest of the building ; and if every chimney did smoke, they might have used chimney-pots of stone colour in- stead of ruddle.
I sighed, and proceeded to the City; and found compensatien in the un-
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