The Sanitary Institute Congress. The Seventeenth Congress of the Sanitary Institute, to be held at Birmingham from the 27th September to the 1st October, will open with a reception in the Council House by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham. The President, Sir Joseph Fayrer, will deliver his inaugural Address in the Birmingham and Midland Institute, and the Exhibition will be held at Bingley Hall. The Institute is to be officially represented by Mr. Thos. W. Cutler [F.] and Mr. Wm. Henman [F.], President of the Architecture and Engineering Section. Other members of the Institute officially taking part are Messrs. Lewis Angell [F.], C. E. Bateman [F.], H. H. Collins [F.], Ernest Day [F.], and Wm. Hale [F.]. "Dwellings of the Working Classes," "Construction and Ventilation of House Drainage," and " Drainage of Buildings possessing no open space" are among the subjects to be discussed. A New Art Review. Among the foreign art publications, such as the German Der Stil and Der Formen Schatz, which the Library of the Institute receives through the courtesy of the several publishers, there is one which merits more general support than it seems to obtain. This is the Bouw- en Sierkunst, published by Messrs. Kleinmann & Co., of Haarlem. The first number appeared in January 1898, and though it was announced as a two-monthly periodical, the third number, that for May, has only now come to hand. The French equivalent title is Revue de l'Art Antique et Moderne, which to the ordinary English reader gives a clearer idea of its scope. The text all through is given in the two languages. In an introductory article in the first number Mr. J. L. M. Lauweriks, of Amsterdam, enters into an æsthetic discussion on the relations between the essential artistic Principle, the Artist who acts in obedience to the impulse of the Principle, and the Work of Art that is the result. The Principle alone of the three terms of the proportion is imperishable; but to understand this Principle, a clear realisation of the proportion is imperative. The object, therefore, of the review seems to be the illustration of this proportion by examples of works of Ancient and Modern Art of the same class. Each number contains ten plates dealing with Ancient Art and five with Modern. The first number contains illustrations from a Psalter of the thirteenth century and of a modern commemorative album, binding, inner pages on parchment, &c., presented in 1896 to Professor Foster, of Amsterdam. The March number deals with some Egyptian sculptures and bas-reliefs and the work of L. Zijl, of Amsterdam. Judging from the photographs one is inclined to attribute a clearer vision to the Egyptian than to the Modern. The May issue, which is the best, takes for its ancient work a very beautiful Japanese painting, representing Buddha surrounded by mythological personages and symbolical attributes, and for its modern pendant some of the work of the young Dutch Symboliste, J. Tooroop, whose marvellous picture of The Brides aroused such sincere admiration together with unsatisfied curiosity at the Exhibition of International Art at Knightsbridge this year. One of the most interesting plates is a study for The Sphynx, which was also on view at Knightsbridge. Each set of plates is accompanied by a descriptive text, but the moral to be enforced by the comparison or contrast of the old and the new is left, after Mr. Lauweriks's first article, to the student of aesthetics. The plates are beautifully printed on fine paper, and the general form of the periodical commends itself to the lover of good and artistic workmanship. MR. HUGH STANNUS [F] has been specially engaged to give a course of lectures at the Manchester Municipal School of Art next session on "The Principles and Practice of Architecture." The architectural curriculum at this School has been arranged in co-operation with the Manchester Society of Architects. MR. WM. J. ANDERSON [4.] is to deliver a series of lectures at the Glasgow School of Art next Session on "The Architecture of the Renaissance in France." Mr. Batsford is just issuing a second edition of Mr. Anderson's Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy, and announces as in preparation by the same author a work entitled Architecture of Greece and Rome: a Sketch of its Historic Development. THE death is regretfully recorded of Henry Hewitt Bridgman, Associate 1871, Fellow 1883; andof the following Associates: Charles Emanuel Evans, elected 1882; Sidney Alexander Ell, elected 1889, and George Macfie Poole, elected 1896.Sir Henry William Peek, whose death was recently announced, had been an Honorary Fellow since 1871. T Fig. 1.-Glasgow Cathedral, from the Merchant Park Cemetery, in 1833. (From M Lellan's "Glasgow Cathedral.") GLASGOW CATHEDRAL. * HE Book of Glasgow Cathedral is the outcome of a praiseworthy attempt to furnish an adequate history and a worthily illustrated account of the greatest fane of Scotland. In outward form it is a thick quarto volume, bound in buckram boards bearing a most eccentric design, while the text is beautifully printed, and well illustrated by photogravures, process blocks, and line reproductions. The editor has been fortunate in gathering round him a group of contributors whose acquaintance with that part of the subject assigned to each is matter of common local report. And Mr. George Eyre Todd is not content with the task of reconciling seven points of view, for with his own pen he contributes largely, if not to the subject, at least to its introduction. A book on a single topic with eight authors might be supposed to be confusing; but the choice is necessarily between the advantages of specialism on the one hand, and the unity and consistency of the work of one man on the other; and in this case, the cathedral being a many-sided subject, the arrangement quite justifies itself. The criticism to which the work is much more open is that "The Cathedral Church," as one chapter of sixteen, occupying a tenth part of the whole, does not assume its proper proportions. A "Book of the Cathedral" which gives the Cathedral Church (that is, the whole remaining building) this inconspicuous place amid a mass of literature relating to such widely sundered subjects as "The Beginnings of Glasgow," "St. Kentigern," "The Dark Ages," "The Cathedral Chapter," "The Cathedral and the Municipality," "The (modern) Monuments and Inscriptions," &c., can scarcely be said to fulfil its purpose *The Book of Glasgow Cathedral: a History and Description. Edited by George Eyre Todd. 40. Glas Third Series, Vol. V. No. 20.-15 October 1898. gow, 1898. Price £2. 2s. net. [Messrs. Morison Brothers, perfectly; while it also fails to give due weight to the medieval building as a veritable document in itself, and sufficient attention to its interpretation. Not that the matters referred to are wholly irrelevant; the book might, however, have been a better one were it more rigidly tied down to the consideration of the actual Cathedral. A sketch of the development of Gothic architecture and a study of related buildings would have been equally relevant to the purpose of the book, and might even have been more highly instructive; but only a moment's reflection is necessary to show that this would be an error of taste and judgment, and in another direction a mistake of the kind has been made. From a literary point of view, it may be that Mr. Todd's chapters will appear to best advantage of the series. In tracing the origin of Glasgow he attempts, in the spirit of modern criticism, to establish the continuity of religious worship on the site, to heal the breach between the Celtic Pagan and the Celtic Christian civilisations; and in this connection he proposes to relate the Baal cult of Craigmaddie Moor with the Christian rites of the Molendinar. All this would be exceedingly useful had the subject been the history of Glasgow, or the Pagan or early Christian civilisation of Scotland; but as the book claims to be "a history and description of Glasgow Cathedral," which is a monument of Gothic architecture and of the Roman religious domination, the intrusion to so great an extent of prehistoric matter is unfortunate. Some twenty pages are thus given up to the legends of St. Kentigern, whose death is separated from the earliest visible stone of the Cathedral by a period much longer than that which removes us from its completion. What is known of the Keledei or Culdee churches is detailed in the chapter on "The Dark Ages," while, under the title of "The Catholic Bishopric," the history of the see under Roman organisation is written by the present representative in Glasgow of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In the chapter on "The Cathedral and the Municipality,” Mr. James Paton, writing in a vigorous and interesting way, contrives to convey much valuable information, his contribution being tantamount to the modern history of the Cathedral from the Reformation. Passing over the "Catalogue of the Bishops, Archbishops, and Ministers" and the chapter on "The Ancient Chapter of the Cathedral," we arrive tardily, more than half way through the book, at the part which treats of the material fabric. Mr. John Honeyman, to whose hands "The Cathedral Church" has been entrusted, sets out by a statement that his aim is to steer a middle course between such fidelity to detail as is likely to satisfy an expert, and such redundancy of illustration or technicalities as might repel the general reader. Under these limitations Mr. Honeyman has been remarkably successful; no more lucid descriptive sketch of the structure could be desired. He says that while the Cathedral, "shorn of its old western adjuncts, has an exceedingly tame and diminutive effect" (referring doubtless to the view from the one entrance to the precinct), "the interior of the building is probably more grand and impressive than any other of the same size." Speaking again of the exterior on page 240, he says, "It may, indeed, be called severe, but not tame," and this is certainly a more precise estimate of its effect from any point of view other than that with which most visitors rest content. Picturesque to quaintness in outline, simple in grouping, rigid in articulation, and cautious in construction (for neither nave nor choir was vaulted), it embodies much of the national character with which, at a later day, its owners and occupants found themselves out of touch. It is to be regretted that no illustration conveys a faithful impression of the view from the eastern end, which is by far the grandest aspect of it, and, while far inferior, recalls some of the elements which go to make up the magnificence of the western view of the pile which commands the Wear. The claim for the interior, gaunt and austere though it be, is a bold one, and is one of those statements which would be difficult to make good. But when it is remembered that the upper church is in actual dimension much smaller than Beverley Minster (which also looks larger than it is), or Santo Spirito in Florence, its internal effect can only be described as imposing. Like these churches, too, it seems to tell of one designer, or at least a single definite scheme; for although the interior bears testimony to three distinct periods, their harmony is as a chord struck by one player. In place of the multitudinous fancies, the intricate and highly organised system to which most Gothic churches speak, there is rather here the "intimate impress" of a human soul, to borrow an expression which Pater applies to a church of Brunelleschi. Compared with Salisbury, Beverley, or other English churches of the period, there is a northern rudeness and force which strike one most of all in the nave, most admirably rendered by the beautiful photogravure of which the accompanying block (fig. 4) is a reproduction in process. Mr. Honeyman points out that the pillars of the nave, being regulated by the Transitional bases, are more closely spaced than otherwise they would have been; and to this some of the effect of size and massiveness may be traced. The prototype of the Transitional nave planned for Glasgow he finds in Jedburgh Abbey, but the final execution of it was reserved till the end of the thirteenth century. Thus, as in the nave of Winchester, the ideas of two periods unite to produce the result. It is with the nave that the distinctively Scottish part of the work begins, the eastern arm being of Early English character. This, however, was no reason why an equally good photograph of the choir might not have been procured, to |