Some palpable mistakes, due to economy, can be detected at once. The intention of the architect in designing so long and so low a structure was to relieve it by the two Towers, which were to “carry up” the eye--like spires. The great Victoria Tower, whose enormous proportions can only be appreciated when we are close to it, seems as vast and massive as the Tower of the Town Hall at Ypres--that wonder of the world. Yet the whole idea of its imposing height has been sacrificed: it is indeed difficult to believe that it is as high as the dome of St. Paul’s. As Fergusson says, “the Victoria Tower partly dwarfs the portion of the building near it. Yet in the original design it was intended to be six stories in height, which increase would have lessened the sense of breadth, making it more airy. Unfortunately the architect had the weakness of often changing his original purpose, consequently the entrance, instead of being only of the height of two stories of the building as at first proposed, now runs through and makes the adjacent House of Lords ridiculous. If the size of the gate is appropriate the Lords are pigmies. Worse than this, at the back of the great arch is a little one, one fourth its height, through which everything must pass. The counterpart of all this is the House, which looks much smaller than it really is.” The fact is, that when the Tower was approaching completion the House of Commons, in a fit of economy, interposed and refused to allow it to be carried to its proper height. It is now therefore some thirty or forty feet too short. Its proportions seem clumsy and stinted, and it is really unpleasant to contemplate. The _flèche_ that rises from the centre of the building is really beautiful and elegant, covering (which few would suspect) the great central Hall, and, with these various towers and spires forms a charming assemblage, to which the Abbey unhappily does not contribute, for its central tower ought to be furnished with a _flèche_, or an octagonal lantern, like the one at St. Ouen at Rouen. Wren, it is known, prepared a design, which however was laid aside.