Chapter IV
. In his original design a great staircase led from the central hall direct to the committee-rooms. This was also given up.
[98] I remember that he was greatly struck with the windows of the churches at Nuremberg in this respect. The new Munich glass, beautiful in itself, he thought wrong in principle, as ignoring the primary object of a window, and attempting the effects of regular painting.
[99] Two stories, equal in importance, were not satisfactory. There was duality of design. In grand compositions he preferred, on a base well raised above the ground, three stories nearly alike; but the upper one somewhat more important (as in the Farnese Palace), so as, in some measure, to combine the three. When the three stories differed much, they should be perfectly dissimilar. By making the middle one the principal; the upper, of little importance; and the lower, a mere basement, the eye would not be distracted by three separate objects, but would rest upon the one principal story, by viewing the others as subordinate. When two stories only could be introduced, he preferred that the upper should be the principal, and the lower, a basement--as in the Thiene Palace at Vicenza. In the Reform Club and Bridgewater House, where he could not make the upper story important, he would, had convenience allowed, have made the lower one much less so than we now see it. Two stories of nearly equal importance, as in Whitehall and his New Palace, jarred with his principle of unity.--MS. note _W_.
[100] This tower has no diminution. He was quite aware, from the time he noticed Giotto’s Campanile, that such objects will, under certain aspects, appear larger above than below; and had this tower been plain, and without turrets, no doubt the optical illusion would have been corrected. But a diminution in the turrets would have made their inner sides out of parallel with the vertical lines on the face of the towers, and set-offs would have caused dislocation in the panelling--irregularities not to be thought of. For, full as Mr. Barry’s mind was of grand ideas, he was acutely sensitive in matters of the minutest detail. In the architectural decorations of his New Palace, extensive and elaborate as they are, every part has exquisite finish, and there will hardly be found the smallest defect, or even irregularity, that care or ingenuity could avoid.--MS. note _W_.
[101] This tendency to alteration grew upon him perhaps to excess in his later years. His taste, always fastidious, became morbidly sensitive; he could not tolerate the slightest appearance of defect in proportion or detail. The inevitable effect was not only great waste of labour and money, but occasionally a danger of losing the original harmony of a design in the multiplicity of alterations. But it was only an exaggeration of the one true secret of success and perfection--“the capacity of taking infinite pains.”
[102] Thus, for example, the panels on the river front contain the coats of arms of all the sovereigns of England, from William I. to Victoria; the niches on the flanks contain statues of the Saxon kings and queens; the reigning family is exalted in the niches of the Victoria tower, &c.
[103] I do not think it necessary to give a detailed description of the design and decoration of the building. For this I would refer to the illustrations of the New Palace of Westminster by E. N. Holmes, Esq. (Warrington), to the official Handbook to the New Palace of Westminster, and to a paper read before the Institute of British Architects, on February 1st, 1858, by E. M. Barry, Esq., A.R.A.
[104] At the foot of this staircase stands the statue of the architect, in a position sufficiently public, but not very central or commanding.
[105] For almost the whole of this