“The death of Sir Charles Barry, at a moment when he appeared in the full enjoyment of life and intellect, is a severe public, no less than an artistic loss. We are glad to learn that his claims as one of the worthies of the age are to be recognised by a public funeral, and a resting-place beneath the vault of Westminster Abbey.... It is undeniable that Sir C. Barry has not been for many years popular with officials; but we are not inclined to think the worse of him on that account. He was through life a man of large and expansive ideas, and of resolute determination to carry out those ideas; and, as might be supposed, he was continually in collision alike with red-tape officials, and the economic bullies of supply-nights. Season after season a raid at Sir C. Barry was a sure card for a little cheap popularity in the House of Commons.... His Prize design in its first conception embodied a great mistake, the adaptation of Tudor forms to an Italian mass. Time rolled on, and the great Gothic Renaissance came into existence, owing in a great degree to this very competition. Barry was not the man to cling to an inferior and antiquated design from false shame or blindness to the movement of the age. The world was learning its lesson, and he conned that lesson with the world.... His death at this time, when he was gradually retiring from the more active pursuit of his profession, was, in one respect, as great a loss as if he had been carried off in the height of his more youthful labours. At a moment when the battle of the styles is running the risk of creating an _odium architectonicum_, and when the pernicious heresy is blossoming in influential quarters, that the dignity, the ornament, and the convenience of a metropolis are no concern of a great nation and an imperial legislature, we cannot well afford to miss the man who, from his position, talents, and age, could speak upon architectural questions with somewhat of the authority of a Nestor.”