+ENGLAND.+ There was, strictly speaking, no Roman revival in Great Britain. The modified Palladian style of Wren and Gibbs and their successors continued until superseded by the Greek revival. The first fruit of the new movement seems to have been the +Bank of England+ at London, by _Sir John Soane_ (1788). In this edifice the Greco-Roman order of the round temple at Tivoli was closely copied, and applied to a long façade, too low for its length and with no sufficient stylobate, but fairly effective with its recessed colonnade and unpierced walls. The +British Museum+, by _Robert Smirke_ (Fig. 198), was a more ambitious essay in a more purely Greek style. Its colossal Ionic colonnade was, however, a mere frontispiece, applied to a badly planned and commonplace building, from which it cut off needed light. The more modest but appropriate columnar façade to the +Fitzwilliam Museum+ at Cambridge, by _Bassevi_, was a more successful attempt in the same direction, better proportioned and avoiding the incongruity of modern windows in several stories. These have always been the stumbling-block of the revived Greek style. The difficulties they raise are avoided, however, in buildings presenting but two stories, the order being applied to the upper story, upon a high stylobate serving as a basement. The +High School+ and the Royal Institution at Edinburgh, and the University at London, by _Wilkins_, are for this reason, if for no other, superior to the British Museum and other many-storied Anglo-Greek edifices. In spite of all difficulties, however, the English extended the applications of the style with doubtful success not only to all manner of public buildings, but also to country residences. Carlton House, Bowden Park, and Grange House are instances of this misapplication of Greek forms. Neither did it prove more tractable for ecclesiastical purposes. +St. Pancras’s+ Church at London, and several churches by _Thomson_ (1817-75), in Glasgow, though interesting as experiments in such adaptation, are not to be commended for imitation. The most successful of all British Greek designs is perhaps +St. George’s Hall+ at Liverpool (Fig. 199), whose imposing peristyle and porches are sufficiently Greek in spirit and detail to class it among the works of the Greek Revival. But its great hall and its interior composition are really Roman and not Greek, emphasizing the teaching of experience that Greek architecture does not lend itself to the exigencies of modern civilization to nearly the same extent as the Roman. [Illustration: FIG. 199.--ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LIVERPOOL.] [Illustration: FIG. 200.--THE OLD MUSEUM, BERLIN.]