BEAUTY IN ARCHITECTURE

Otaki Mail, 15 January 1919, Page 3

BEAUTY IN ARCHITECTURE

THE WELLINGTON ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL.

• Since the beginning of man's sojourn on this earth, the beautiful in nature has always been a spur to his better instincts and ambitions. The colours' of land and sea and sky, the beauty of the human form, the tall columns of the forest, trees —he has copied them into pictures and sculpture and architecture. As objects of art many of these works have been treasured for hundreds of years, and history teaches that a people that has neither art nor literature cannot survive; they fall steadily but surely into oblivion, being merged into other nations v in whom the divine love of the beautiful has found free realm of art has mankind achieved greater triumphs than in that of architecture; and nowhere in architecture more than in the building of glorious cathedrals. In earlier days men and women gladly laboured with their I hands, at skilled or unskilled work connected with the building, while the masters in art and architedture planned and directed. To-day sees different fashions and customs in the world. Yet in the building of a splendid memorial cathedral such as the Anglican Cathedral, which it is proposed to erect in Wellington, where St, Mark's Church now stands, everybody can help just as effectively as if they made mortar with their hands or carried water, or fashioned the stone: It is by free-will offer- J ings that this cathedral is to be built, and there is a gradation of gifts.which may be made, so that everyone may give definitely a portion of the cathedral. A tower may be built for £IO,OOO, and be dedicated cither as a memorial or a thankoffcring, for a soldier lost in the war or a soldier safe-returned. And so the list runs down—transept, Galilee porch, baptistry, rose window, and a score of others —down to the lesser ornaments of the huge building, which the widow's mite may purchase, and the widow's heart dedicate. To learn more of this splendid scheme it is only necessary to communicate with the hon. organising secretary, Rev. C. F. Askew, St. Mark's Vicarage, Wellington.