by Mr. J. Shaw; that it forms a vast quadrangle 260 feet long by 154 wide; that the dining-hall is a noble room 88 feet by 28 and 33 feet high; that in the centre of each wing is a lofty tower; that every provision is made for the health and comfort of the boys, 240 in number (including a separate sleeping room for each); and that besides standing in a fine open country, the college is surrounded with ample grounds. Our engraving represents the entrance front. The cost of the building is estimated at about 55,000l. It is to be formally opened in January.

A few other scholastic institutions may be mentioned :—the North Wales Training School at Carnarvon, designed by Mr. Kennedy, of Bangor; the Grammar School at Retford, a handsome Elizabethan building erected at a cost of 12,000.; the extensive Central London District Schools at Hanwell; schools at Agar Town; at Malvern ; Mechanics' Institution at North Shields; Roman Catholic schools at Moorfields; a large and convenient Jews' school in Spitalfields, &c. One of the handsomest of the recent buildings of the kind is the Asylum for Fatherless Children at Coulsden, Surrey, on the SouthEastern Railway. It is a spacious stone structure, Italian in style, and almost palatial in character, having a lofty central tower and turrets at the angles; designed by Mr. Moffatt, and occupying a commanding site on the slope of a hill.

Among the more noteworthy modern buildings for size and costliness, are to be reckoned the county lunatic asylums, which are rising rapidly all over the country. This year has seen the completion of lunatic asylums for the counties of Sussex, Cumberland and Westmoreland, Durham, Northumberland, &c. We cannot, however, dwell on these, and we can only mention, in passing, the erection of an infirmary at Blackburn; of county buildings at Taunton; the extension of Cardiff gaol; the formation of a female reformatory at Fulham, and of juvenile reformatories in various parts of the country.

6. STREET ARCHITECTURE.

Last year we dwelt at some length on street architecture; this year we must be content to indicate its progress in the briefest possible way. In London, the city warehouses and offices maintain the lead; and rapidly the narrow dingy streets and passages are widening and brightening, by the setting back of the houses wherever new ones are erected, and by the construction of the new houses in an ornamental manner. In Cornhill, the large and lofty structure designed by Messrs. Francis, for the National Discount Company, is indeed redundant in decoration: the style is Italian renaissance, and now it is completed, it has a certain grandiose air. At the corner of Billiter Lane, Fenchurch Street, another large pile has been built in what must, we suppose, be also called renaissance; the chief ornamental feature is the doorway, the lintel of which is supported by colossal terminal figures; though not in the purest taste, the building has a good deal of character. Other but plainer offices have been built in the same street; and others again, some of them of a very costly and sufficiently pretentious order, and some in very good taste, in Mark-lane, the

narrow streets, lanes, and courts about Cornhill and Cannon-street, in Wood-street, Gresham-street, Staining-lane, London-wall, Leadenhallstreet (where a fine building is rising for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company), &c. Two assurance offices call for a word of special notice the Crown, in Bridge-street, Blackfriars, by Deane and Woodward, a bold adaptation of Venetian-Gothic to a street front, in which coloured granite and marble are freely used; and the Law, adjoining the new wing of the Law Institution in Chancery-lane, Italian in character, with a very handsome and well-finished doorway. And whilst here, we may mention that this new wing is finished externally, and that the benchers of the Middle Temple have commenced the erection of a new library. A somewhat novel attempt to break the monotony of a street-line is being made in Theobald's-road, where a new school-house, in course of erection, has, what appears likely to be, a large red-brick tower on a level with the adjoining house, the body of the building being set back: we must, however, wait till it is further advanced to judge of the effect. At the West-end there are some new business-houses in course of construction, but none that demand more than this general reference.

We must also on the present occasion be content to indicate merely the continued progress of the warehouses of Manchester, and the offices of Liverpool; that banking-houses have been built at Barnsley, Bradford, and elsewhere; post-offices at Swansea, &c.; that from Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, and almost every other large town, there are reports of buildings for trading purposes erecting of a really architectural character; that manufacturing premises on a large scale continue to be built, like the Britannia iron-works at Bedford; the brewery of Messrs. Allsop, at Burton, which is to cost about 100,0007; and others in various parts of the country, not usually called manufacturing, as well as in the pre-eminently "manufacturing districts."

7. BRIDGES, Docks, &c.

Westminster Bridge is advancing, though with less rapidity than was anticipated when the operations were renewed; and again the delay is attributed to the inertness of that department of the government which has the control of such works. The first portion of it is not now expected to be ready for traffic till towards the close of 1859 instead of 1858. The piers on the western side are complete, those on the east, except where they pass under the arches of the old bridge, must wait for the removal of that structure. The first ribs of the new iron arches will now soon be fixed. In the form it has finally assumed there can be no doubt of the elegance of the new bridge, nor of its assimilation with the new Palace at Westminster, the engineer of the bridge working in complete accord with Sir Charles Barry. The width of the bridge, our readers may remember, will be 85 feet; the arches, seven in number, will be in form a continuous curve, a novelty among bridges, and a graceful one. Mr. Page's other bridge at Battersea was duly opened, and has, with the exception of the tollhouses, been generally admired. Some not unpleasant novelty of effect is given to it by the colouring of the iron work, which has

been painted of a tea-green colour sparingly picked out with gold. Curiously enough the bridge was scarcely finished before means were adopted for destroying to a great extent its picturesque appearance. A bill was brought into parliament for continuing the West-end railway from the present terminus at Battersea to Pimlico, by a bridge across the Thames a short distance below the suspension-bridge, and parallel to it. Before passing into a law, this arrangement was, however, so far altered by the Lords, that the railway-bridge will cross the river some way lower, and oblique to the present structure. The bridges will now be nearly 200 yards apart, but this is near enough to be damaging.

The floating of the second tube of Mr. Brunel's remarkable Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash was safely effected in the course of the summer, and the entire works appear to be proceeding satisfactorily. Other important railway viaducts have been completed, but they hardly fall within the province of this paper.

Great progress has been making during the last few years in enlarging and extending the various government docks and dock-yards. These works have been proceeded with during the present year on the largest scale, perhaps, at Chatham, where new docks have been constructed and old ones extended, and great additions made to the dock-yard buildings; but very extensive works have also been in progress at Pembroke, where the entrance has been widened, the dry dock enlarged, the channel in front of the dock improved, new slips built, &c.; at Keyham, at Portsmouth, &c.

Among the commercial docks there has also been great activity. At the London Docks two new locks have been constructed to admit the immense vessels now built: these locks are 200 and 150 feet long respectively, 60 feet wide, and have 28 feet of water. Every improvement has been adopted in their construction, and they are perhaps the most perfect works of their kind yet erected. A new basin, 780 feet by 450 feet, and extensive warehouses, have also been constructed. The engineers were Messrs. Rendell. At the Grand Surrey Docks, on the opposite side of the Thames, a new dock entrance, inner dock, basin, and timber-dock are in course of formation; and these, though of a far less expensive character than those just mentioned, are estimated to cost upwards of 100,000l.: the engineers are Messrs. Bidder and Jennings. Extensive docks have likewise been formed at Brentford in connection with the canal terminus and the Great Western Railway. Turning to the provinces, we may notice that the works have been renewed at Birkenhead Docks on a grand scale, and that considerable dock extension is about to be commenced at Liverpool. At Newport a new dock was opened in March with great public rejoicings: it is 950 feet by 350 in the widest part, the area being eight acres. engineer was Mr. Abernethy: the cost 64,0007. At Swansea, docks covering an area of 13 acres have been begun, and the railway is to be carried down to them. At Cardiff a new graving-dock has been constructed, as well as other works in connection with the Bute Dock; and one at Great Grimsby 400 feet long, with an entrance 70 feet wide. At Topsham, a dry dock, capable of holding a vessel of 1,000 tons, has been finished. Extensive works

The

are also in progress at Southampton Docks. At Tewkesbury, important works have been in progress for improving the navigation of the Severn. Piers have been built at Yarmouth and in several other places.

For once we depart from our usual plan of not noticing any comments which appear on this annual retrospect of architectural progress in order to say a word or two on the principle on which it is written.

Both the 'Builder' and the 'Building News,' in reviews of the article for 1858, whilst sufficiently complimentary as to its tone, and the information condensed in it, remarked, with curious unanimity, that it was greatly indebted to their pages for the materials on which the notices of the new buildings were based. They did not say that we borrowed unfairly, but that we borrowed from them. Now it is undoubtedly true that we are indebted to those journals for information-but we are indebted to them for little else: our opinions are our own. The 'Builder' and the 'Building News' are to architecture what the 'Times' and the 'Daily News' are to politics and public events; and the writer who undertook to give a sketch of architectural progress, would execute his task very imperfectly if he did not studiously examine the pages of the two great architectural newspapers. But the daily and the weekly London newspapers, and occasionally provincial newspapers, have also been in like manner, though less diligently, consulted. Consulted, not copied. In a large proportion of the notices of provincial buildings, we have necessarily had to follow the descriptions of them in the journals-descriptions usually supplied by the architects or other persons interested in the buildings. But every building in the metropolis or its vicinity of any importance has been personally examined, and the criticisms invariably, and the descriptions mainly, have been written from our own notes.

Further, the Building News' says that "four out of the five cuts" in last year's paper were taken from engravings which appeared in that journal. This, again, is most certainly an error. Four out of the five cuts were from original sketches made expressly for this work, or from drawings lent to us by the architects. But with the views, as with the descriptions, we have necessarily followed in the footsteps of our contemporaries. In an annual retrospect it is impossible to give engravings of buildings of which engravings have not already been given elsewhere. The Builder,' the 'Building News,' the 'Illustrated News,' the Illustrated Times,' and the 'Illustrated News of the World,' are constantly endeavouring to get the start of each other in representing a building which has advanced sufficiently to attract public attention; and between them it seldom happens that a structure of any consequence is completed without having been engraved in one or more of those publications. In the cuts which appear in this article, we merely profess to give views or elevations of a few of the buildings erected during the year, which seem best to illustrate the actual progress and tendency of architecture, without regard to their novelty, and without inquiring whether they have or have not been previously engraved.

At the same time, while we thus set our excellent contemporaries right on this matter, we gladly avail ourselves of the opportunity to express our obligations to both of them. Without such chronicles to refer to-in which professional information is every week collected from all parts of the country-it would be quite impossible for any single writer to give, in an annual summary like the present, anything approaching the amount of information we are now able to lay before our readers.