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ARTISTIC CONSIDERATIONS ON THE NEW COURTS OF JUSTICE.
[THESE observations we have received from one of our oldest cor- respondents—one whose duty for near half a century has been Law, and whose recreation Art—a witness on nearly all the committees and commissions which have sat on the subject of Court concen- tration since.1840.—En. Spectator.]
tTimes is desirous to divert the proposed Palace of Justice om its natural site, —which unquestionably is between Lincoln's Inn and the Temples,—to some part of the Thames Em- bankment. On the aesthetic side of the question Mr. Vincent Scully has thrown out this scheme in Parliament. On the 7th and 23rd inst. ,two letters, signed "S.," advocating the same view, ap- peared in our contemporary's columns. And on the philanthropic aide of the question Mr. Walter has moved for returns of the num- ber of inhabitants who will, should the 300 requisite houses be taken down, be turned out of quarters,—we can hardly say out of house and home, if we consider the disreputable character of the houses in question. On the philanthropic view of the case we do not propose now to speak, but will confine ourselves to the observation that Mr. Walter had better ask for twenty-four returns, one for the number of inhabitants at each hour of the twenty-four. Such returns would give us a curious insight into the peripatetic cha- racter of the so-called inmates. On the artistic view of this sub- ject it is clearly of great interest that public discussion should take place. There can be no doubt that the daily enjoyment and to some extent the character of men is affected by the scenery (using the word in its widest sense) among which they live. In cities it is impossible but that the tastes, characters, and pleasures of the inhabitants should be much influenced by the character of their city—and the architectural character of a metropolis doubtless has its bearing on the whole nation.
What, then, is the true artistic way in which to proceed in the construction of great public works, as instanced in the new Court of Justice ? Certainly, first, every artist will tell us, we should most carefully study those necessities and conveniences of the Law and its suitors which the building is to supply, and should make them paramount to all other considerations. These maturely con- sidered and determined,--next we should determine the right situa- tion in which best to supply those necessities and conveniences. Thirdly,—we should then procure to have designed for us (exclud- ing all external or decorative considerations) the internal arrange- ments most perfectly adapted to this supply. In the present case these arrangements will essentially be as complicated as the most complicated machine : and yet they must work as truly and as smoothly as the most perfect machine. And next (and so far as the essence of the affair goes, and almost so far as the art also goes, and when all the foregoing is done, and not before,) we must procure to have designed for this machine a truly fitting dress —a dress fitting in every sense of the word.
What it will be exclaimed, and no ornament, no decoration, no beauty No. We do not prohibit ornament if it be the adorn- ment of the useful. But we venture to affirm, speaking restheti- cally, that a thorough observance of the foregoing conditions ;
rigidly in the order and subordination above set forth ; will, without any effort for ornament, essentially produce a work of the very highest order of architectural artistic merit, and we invite those who join issue with us on this affirmation to debate the point. We affirm, and on this we have on our side the enthusiastic concurrence of all the painters and sculptors and the best of our architects, that our English artistic shortcomings in our modern structures have mainly arisen from the order of procedure above insisted on not having been followed, and from the first competitions asked for being those which should have been prohibited till the end, namely, competitions rather as to what should be the skin of the building than what should be the thing itself. Let us travel cursorily over the present ground : not quite in the order indicated, because the question of site is better at once disposed of and put out of our way.
As to the situation, the Royal Commissioners were unanimous, and (save two or three Lincoln's Inn benchers, if so many) the whole legal profession to a man agrees with them, that the building must be so placed as to abut at once on the two Temples and on Lincoln's Inn. The Chambers of the Bar must be the wings of the Courts, and with the readiest access between them. Mr. Rolt put this point well in the House of Commons on Thursday, and the suitors and public are much indebted to the Benchers of the Inner Temple for the very wise and far-seeing petition they have presented to Parliament pointing in the same direction. This necessity of unimpeded access, makes the Carey-Street site the only admissible one. Moreover, the suitors are to pay every shilling of the cost, the public not a farthing, and therefore even if the Carey- Street site were less artistic, it would be hard to injure as well as tax the suitors merely to ornament the metropolis. In our opinion the Times might just as well have let this question alone.
The interior arrangements of the building come next, and pre- sent a most difficult problem. These arrangements form the muscles, sinews, and joints of the man ; through and by them only can he act, and move, and do his work.. The exterior is but his skin, or rather but his clothes. The Prometheus therefore must come next into the field, and last the tailor. At the foot of an able pamphlet on the subject just issued by the Social Science Asso- ciation is the following note :—
"Assuming that the Bills are to be passed at the` ensuing Session, the proper arrangement of the details of the plans for best accommodating the various Courts and offices will be a matter of much difficulty, and require great attention from persons practically acquainted with the whole machinery of the Law. Nothing could be more fatal to the scheme than to place this duty in the hands of an architect, or of the Board of Works. It is therefore very satisfactory to find in the Treasury minutes the following passage will be a subject for con- sideration hereafter whether it may not be expedient to appoint a Royal Commission to consider and report on the plans to be adopted for the accommodation of the several Courts.'"
The amendment now introduced in the Bill by the Govern- ment shows they have determined to act on this advice. Let us assume it acted on and the machine devised in all its com- plications. Given, then, the most perfectly convenient site ; the most perfectly convenient arrangement and. collocation of Courts, offices, passages, accesses, and appendages ; given large and lofty rooms, surrounded perhaps by small and compara- tively low ones ; lofty floors mixed up with mezzanines, public and private staircases almost innumerable ; and to each office (or rather department) given also the power of future enlarge- ment and development, and that without need and occasion for any great future displacement of neighbouring offices or depart- ments; then call in the architect, first to determine and provide for the internal structural necessities involved ; and then, and not
till then, to clothe the whole with a fitting dress appropriate to its internal wants: the architect not only never sacrificing one of these wants to his facades; but accommodating, with a master-hand, his exterior to all these wants, and BO doing this as to indicate at once by the very outside walls, the leading internal requirements of the building, and how they have been satisfied ; and thus letting these requirements give the character and emphasis to it, just as the prominent points of the skeleton give the character and emphasis to the human figure, even when it is draped.
A true architect would not mould the wants of the Law to his design, but mould his design so as to satisfy and enshrine all these wants ; and will treat them all (down to the smallest) with a deference almost reverential ; and this spirit of his, according to its intensity, will be so embodied in his work as to raise a perpetual echo of his reverence, in us who are to look on. The building should, we submit, rather be treated as the temple and sanctuary of Justice than as its palace. Designed in that spirit, it will tend to heighten the respect of the public for Justice; and perchance the great men who are to minister therein may be led more and more to look on themselves as the priests of Justice, and less and less as its monarchs. A vast good this would be, but pass it by.
In a work recently published called The Gentleman's House, occurs an expression which struck us as equal to Mr. Ruskin's happiest phrases and more true than many of them. In advocat- ing the above as the true order of architectural procedure, the author, as far as we remember the words, spoke of it as the only method by which to realize those most captivating of all archi- tectural results, viz., those which arise from "the happy irregulari- ties of unrestrained convenience."
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