however, which necessitated the pulling down of some heavy stonework already completed. The noble builder demurred, but parted from his guest with the intention of renewing the discussion in the morning.

vestments" as himself, and business flowed in upon him almost to an overwhelming extent. He himself describes the amount of it as "twice as much as I can do, though I work early and late." At the same time, however, this laborious life was not spent entirely in his office, if he took the trouble to have such a vulgar appendix. When his impatient nature rebelled at the restraints of ordinary life, he went off in his yacht to savage freedom, labour, and solitude, refreshing himself amid the salt spray and stormy winds of the Channel, where, indeed, in a "stiff gale off Calais," he managed to complete the etchings for his next book, to the total incredulity of his publisher. This book was the True Principles of Gothic Architecture, published in 1841, which, his biographer informs us, established his fame. He was now at the height of activity and success, with such an amount of schemes on his hands as appear, though in a list drawn out by himself, scarcely more credible than the careful etchings finished in the Channel did to the amazed bookseller. But ready as he was to undertake and design anything, this strange fellow, wandering over the country in rough pilot-coat and sailor's equipment, warned out of first-class carriages and left waiting in the halls of those who did not know him, was as ready to take offence, and as sensitively determined not to accept criticism, as any paladin. Some odd instances of a degree of artistic pride and self-will not usual in this age, when artists, like other people, have to put their interest before their temper, are recorded of himthough, perhaps, the calm disgust with which Pugin withdraws from the field where his efforts are not appreciated and unhesitatingly accepted, is more ineffable in its quiet arrogance than any effusion of temper. One noble lord sent for him to consult him about some new buildings he was erecting. Pugin came, saw, understood, and made sketches on the spot sketches,

"I

When the morning arrived the refractory architect was gone. He had quietly got up at break of day, shouldered his portmanteau, and evacuated the field where he was not to be permitted to have his own way. A similar incident occurred when the Catholic cathedral of St George's was first projected. Pugin proposed magnificent plans, and entered into the idea with warmth and fervour; till some unlucky committeeman asked an innocent question about expense, upon which the autocrat of the pencil and compasses quietly collected his drawings, put on his hat, "wished the gentlemen good-day, and walked out of the house, leaving the committee in perfect astonishment at his inexplicable conduct." He was prevailed upon, however, to reconsider this matter. Even his special friend, Lord Shrewsbury, did not escape his share of the same. cannot admit that I am to blame respecting the design of the diningroom," writes this impracticable artist to his patron. "Of course, I intended to make a fine thing, suitable to the purpose for which it is designed, and not a common room, fit only for a hotel. am not enabled to exercise my judgment, and make use of my knowledge and experience, I am reduced to the condition of a mere drawing-clerk to work out what I am ordered, and this I cannot bear : and, so far from knocking under, I really must decline undertaking the alteration, unless your lordship will consent to its being made worthy of your dignity and residence. It shall never be said that I have spoilt the dining-room at Alton: I would not do it for a thousand pounds. As regards the hall, I have nailed my colours to the mast-a bay window, high open roof, lantern, two good fireplaces, a great sideboard,

. If I

screen, minstrel gallery — all or none. I will not sell myself to do a wretched thing." Thus spoke Pugin, impatient and arrogant, the wretched thing being, of course, the thing the patron wanted, but which the artist refused to compromise his reputation by, and, indeed, was ready to cover with unscrupulous contempt. Such acts of self-assertion would be simply ridiculous in most men; but they were quite in accordance with this unreasoning, arbitrary soul. Arrogance is not an estimable quality, but it is somehow more forgivable under such circumstances than any other. This unregulated real man conducted himself like an ancient artist, and not like the mild modern type, which suits itself to all the exigencies of public taste, and is complacent to popular wishes. He was ready at any time to insult his best friend on behalf of an unappreciated arch or oriel, and never could separate himself from his productions. His professional tastes and instincts went with him into every particular of his existence. Furniture, jewellery, wedding-cards, nothing escaped his busy and insatiable faculty of decoration. High mass itself did not impose more than a forced stillness upon the fingers which itched to be at those unsatisfactory vestments and defective chalices. Ugliness was intolerable, and beauty (always under severely pointed limitations) a necessity to his impatient and restless spirit. By no other means, notwithstanding Mr Ferrey's regrets, could so large a field have been opened to the enterprising mediævalist as was set before him by his "conversion;" for the truth was, he could let nothing alone which came within his sphere and even the most florid Tractarianism could not have afforded a full outlet for the incalculable stores of "detail" accumulated within his architectural breast.

All did not, however, continue to go so well with the ardent Catholic. Even within the sacred limits of the Church, enemies rose against

him. For, deeply sad as it may be, it is still true, that even Roman Catholics are not unanimous in favour of rood-lofts and chancelscreens-that there are vulgar souls in that communion as in others, who press within the privileged pale, and show a profane desire to be near the altar and hear the service

and that a benighted section of the Church believes in St Peter's, and thinks that big gorgeous temple a model for Christian churches. This sad fact became slowly apparent to the great apostle of pointed architecture in the very blaze of his convert fervour. The unworthy sons of the Church asked for estimates like a set of pettifogging Protestants, and clamoured for cheap churches to hold so many, as if they had been vulgar Independents or Methodists instead of bishops of the unalterable faith. He could not turn upon his spiritual fathers as he did on his secular patrons. They coaxed and remonstrated and humoured the exasperated artist, with all those priestly wiles which are as effectual and irresistible as wiles of women, and deluded him into cutting down his cathedral elevations and "debasing" his darling fancies, not without a rage and vexation which now and then boiled over, but could not free him from the toils in which now, at length, his intolerant spirit was caught fast. When he did succeed in building a church which partially pleased him, they, not less unworthy than the tepid and parsimonious clergy" of the English Church, against whom he had thundered in the Contrasts, neglected and abused it. "I regret to say there seems little or no appreciation of ecclesiastical architecture among the clergy," he writes indignantly. "The cathedral I built at Enniscorthy has been completely ruined. The new bishop has blocked up the choir, stuck the altars under the tower!! and the whole building is in a most painful state of filth. The sacrarium is full of rubbish, and it could hardly have been worse

treated if it had fallen into the hands of Hottentots. I see no progress of ecclesiastical ideas in Ireland. I think, if possible, they get worse. It is quite useless to attempt to build true churches, for the clergy have not the least idea of using them properly."

Such was the melancholy reverse of the picture which, contemplated under different circumstances, had inspired his sanguine soul with such flattering hopes. The rest of Pugin's life was spent in beating against the bars of the prison which had now closed its skilful network round him; in such warfare as was practicable against Oratorians of depraved architectural tastes, and prying priests, and inane Ramblers, and in a gradually growing disgust and discontent which, without going the length of any theological change in his sentiments, kept him in hot water with a considerable portion of his Church, and subjected him to the perpetual coaxings of bland bishops and devoted fathers in God, whose sleek, smoothing-down letters are quoted by the champion of poor Pugin's Catholicity as proofs of the high regard in which that impracticable hero was held by the Church. A curious glimpse into the internal economy of that wonderful ecclesiastical domination is afforded by these letters, and by the careful apologetic statement of Mr Sheridan Purcell, who adds an Examination of the Character and Writings of Pugin, considered in their Catholic Aspect, to Mr Ferrey's narrative. Through this singular performance we can perceive the multifarious cross wires and springs by which the human puppet, however unlikely to answer the impulse of its managers, can yet be kept in some degree of subjection by mingled censure and encouragement.

Such

a man must have given a vast deal of trouble to his spiritual superiors. When he had been aggravated to the very verge of his patience, he had to be caressed and stroked down and indulged in the next

vagary that occurred to him; and when intrusive priests had driven him half-crazy on the one side, affectionate prelates had to come in on the other, taking him into their episcopal confidence, and representing how necessary such and such an amount of reticence and selfcontrol was for the welfare of the Church. So restless and active a genius, especially when engaged in incessant material labours, with stone, iron, gold, and glass to mould to his will in the first place, had fortunately little time to think or go over again the hasty decision of his earlier years; but the endless worry in which it is evident his fellow-Catholics and spiritual guides kept the impatient soul of Pugin, is little encouragement to any similarly-made converts who may come after him. Possibly it might have been less easy still to keep him within the legitimate limit of his bonds, had he not been able to solace himself with the erection of a church of his own at Ramsgate, where by this time he had determined his habitation - a church in which, as he himself says, he was both paymaster and architect. When in the depths of disappointment with other undertakings, he could always console himself at St Augustine's (a name which he gave at once to the dwelling-house and ecclesiastical buildings erected near the briny Foreland, in the completion of which all his after-life was spent) which, accordingly, he elaborated with loving zeal, building himself a house close by it, and observing in it, as soon as that was practicable, all the repeated and continually occurring offices of his religion-a kind of half-monastic devotion which it is amazing to see made entirely compatible with the exigencies of a busy and laborious life. This cherished project carried off his ill-humour, and occupied the brief snatches of leisure which his impatient soul might otherwise have turned to mischief. He built this church on his cliff in flinty solidness and strength.

He decorated its little chancel with all the love at once of an enthusiastic artist and a votive sacrificer. He blazoned its windows with that revived art which he himself had done so much to bring to perfection, and lingered with tender touches over the enrichment of all its accessories. "The altars and tabernacle are elegantly designed, and executed in costly materials, the latter being entirely lined with plates of silver gilt," his biographer tells us, "and the rood-screen and stalls richly carved in oak." The cost of the church and land was upwards of £15,000. This prodigious sum he spared from his yearly income as the labour of love progressed, living meanwhile hospitably and well, but with a primitive simplicity and economy as unusual as his other characteristics. There is something affecting in this offering at once to his Church and to his art which consoled his vexed spirit for many disappointments, and to which not his money only, but the most loving efforts of his genius and personal exertion, were joyfully devoted. One smiles at the Rev. Dr Rock's complimentary devoutness of assurance that the great architect's designs for church-plate would bring new converts to Catholicism, and were an "honour to our holy religion," but one cannot smile at the simple-minded artist's offering to the glory of God. St Augustine's, doubtless, was a wonderful balance to his troubled mind in that noisy and toilsome battle of his life. His laborious days were timed by the bell which tolled forth its summons to the holiday mass, the daily Angelus, the prayers of matins and compline. He laid down his pencil and his busy fancies to answer these ever-recurring calls, and went out of the studio, where no one dared waste a moment, cheerful and hasty, in his sailor dress, a figure most unlike that half-conventual rule under which he lived, to say his hourly prayers. It is impossible to see him in that quaint unusual

scene, so unlike the atmosphere around him, without feeling a certain affection for that sincere and passionate soul; at one moment making a furious onslaught, in turgid but effective print, upon some hapless sinner lost in architectural depravity; at another, facing the storm upon the Ramsgate cliffs, in vehement conflict with every influence which will or can prevent the salvage of some struggling ship, to which the fatal storm, or the still more fatal Goodwins, have made help impossible. On one such oecasion, when a poor little Dutch schooner had been dashed to pieces upon Ramsgate pier, a friend met him rushing to the scene of the calamity, half raving that he had not been called soon enough, and, in his rash but generous confidence that he could have saved the sufferers, ready to denounce every man and thing that had kept the knowledge of it from his ears. Lending ready and skilful help on Ramsgate pier, fighting a Bobadilian battle with Ramblers, sneaking priests, and fanatical Oratorians, with Catholic committees which coaxed him into working for them, yet dwarfed his ideas with miserable limits of pounds and pence-with everybody, in short, who did not receive pointed architecture as another revelation from heaven; working with flying pencil and crowding fancies, yet stopping his work at the sound of the Angelus; with a houseful of children again motherless in the squaretowered, flint-built house, and the daintiest labours of love going on for his consolation in St Augustine's, close by; and all the family and its hangers-on, the ateliers scattered over the country, the workers in stone, in glass, in gold, in iron, in silken broideries and delicate carvings, dependent upon his teeming brain and laborious hands ;-under such circumstances, it would be a hard heart which could refuse a throb of sympathy and admiration to this heavily burdened, hard-working, indomitable soul.

Nor were his struggles confined

to these. After having had two wives, Pugin, still a young man, and with a family of young children, naturally had occasion to supply himself with another of these necessary adjuncts to a householdand seems, oddly enough for a man of his experience, to have undergone a rather fierce fit of love, which, ending disastrously, blazed forth into still fiercer rage and satire against an unhappy lady, who seems to have jilted him by compulsion of her family, and with the worst will in the world. When it was all over, the remorseless middleaged lover published, or at least printed, a Statement of Facts, which Mr Ferrey has reproduced at full length, and which Pugin took pains to distribute at the time to all his friends. It is hard to excuse him for such a proceeding; but he had been deeply aggravated, and believed himself to have been slandered; though why Mr Ferrey should have printed over again this ebullition of the moment is quite incomprehensible. Entirely characteristic as the production is, we will not enter into those details by which the author triumphantly proves himself an injured man, not only in his affections, but in more vulgar particulars. As soon as he had won the heart of the lady which seems indeed to have been given without much asking-he had, as usual, plunged into decoration, and immediately amused himself by designing jewellery for her, and superintending the manufacture of her wedding-dress. The dress and the ornaments were made, to the very wedding-ring; but glum fathers and brothers came in and constrained an unwilling rupture of the secret vows; upon which, with a truculent quotation—

"Woman's faith and woman's trust, Write the characters in dust"for his motto, the outraged artist blazed forth into pitiless retaliation. Though it was furious earnest to Pugin, and must have been still harder upon the unfortunate lady

thus held up to public censure, it is a most quaint and amusing episode in modern domestic history; and is entirely out of character with the "period," though in perfect keeping with the man. The vacant place in his affections was, however, soon and happily filled up.

Not long after this remarkable personal drama, Pugin became absorbed into the vast whirlpool of labour occasioned by the erection of the Houses of Parliament. How much of that sumptuous erection was his, and how much Barry's, perhaps nobody living is able to discriminate with perfect justice; but most competent authorities seem to concur in giving the lion's share of the work to Pugin. It was he who, within doors at least, was the soul of the mighty mass. It was he who poured forth all the "detail" beloved of connoisseurs, which enriches those princely chambers. The regiments of manufacturers, of workmen, and even of artists, whom he must have inspired or created for this purpose, may be faintly guessed at by examination of all that prodigality of adornment. Of this prodigious amount of labour, almost everything passed through his own hands. The glass, though designed by another artist, who had for years before contributed human grace and the interest of sacred story to the unrivalled ornamental framework of the great architect, was still indebted to his personal touch for some of its decorative details, though unhappily, by some traordinary chance which nobody seems able to explain, withdrawn from his influence in the execution. If Barry was monarch outside, and before the eye of the public, Pugin reigned within-a busy, intolerant, yet genial autocrat, rejoicing in the chaos of labour which few other men could have lived through. Perhaps the "rights" of this co-partnership can never now be fully ascertained. Mr Ferrey remarks upon the strange fact that only one letter from Sir Charles Barry to Pugin has been preserved, or is accessible; but that

ex