In order to carry out the ideas embodied in the scheme of the Commissioners, great exhibitions of cartoons and sculpture took place in Westminster Hall. Premiums were offered, and commissions were given to those who gained the highest places in this grand competition. The work is still going on, and (it is to be hoped) will be continued, till something like the ideal proposed in the reports shall be realized. Few buildings could be better adapted to serve as a British “Walhalla.” The natural wish for the perpetuation of memorials of great men and great events has filled St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey with monuments, seldom fitted for places of Christian worship and Christian sepulture. Such monuments might well find a place in future in a building, which is at once a palace of the Sovereign and the home of the legislature,--a building moreover, which by its extent and by its publicity gives the greatest possible scope for such commemoration of the past. When we look at what has been already done by the hands of our most celebrated artists, it is impossible not to feel that already the object of the Commission has been, to a great extent, attained, and a great opportunity nobly used. It is to be hoped, that even now such modifications may be made, during the continuance of the work, as may do away with all such drawbacks as those noticed above, and secure the harmony needed for grandeur of effect. But, if it was Mr. Barry’s fate thus to encounter opposition and difficulty, it was his good fortune in the execution of his great work to draw round him men, who would work heartily under his direction, and yet would bring to their work all the enthusiasm and the high artistic spirit, which are usually supposed to belong only to independent workers. The opportunity was a great one; the scale of the building, the supplies given from the public purse, and (for a considerable time) the large discretion left to the architect in the employment of those resources, were at that time unprecedented. Mr. Barry felt the greatness of the opportunity. Not only did he desire to make his building a treasure-house of art and a sculptured memorial of our national history, but he also hoped to raise up in the course of its execution a school of decorative art, guided, but not servilely confined, by the examples of Gothic antiquity, and bringing to the evolution of Gothic principles all the resources of modern thought and science. His ideas on the former point are embodied in the communication to the Fine Arts Commission, which is quoted above. The appointment of the Commission, of which (as has been remarked) he was not made a member, to a great extent took the highest artistic decoration out of his hands; and, but for his strenuous resistance, would have interfered even with purely architectural details. Still, however, much remained in his power; and his hopes in this direction did not fail of considerable accomplishment.