Page:Alexis de Chateauneuf - The Country House.djvu/34

 was the painters who set up for reformers in architecture. Holbein, there is reason to think, erected the first specimen of the antique in England: the portal of Wilton House, for his patron the Earl of Pembroke, still existing. About a hundred years later, Rubens, with the view of giving the death-blow to the still lingering taste for Gothic architecture in the Netherlands, made drawings of the Palaces of Genoa, and caused them to be disseminated in engravings. At the present day, indeed, we may be excused for smiling at the classical zeal of the worthy Peter Paul, who, in his preface to that collection of designs, inveighs against Gothic architecture as barbarous, at the same time that the plates themselves which he gives, are little better than hideous caricatures of the modern Genoese style, which, at the best is by no means remarkable for purity of taste.

Should Gothic architecture, which is just now employed upon a liberal scale, and with more or less of true feeling for it, in your country ever obtain firm footing there again, depend upon it my professional brethren who have, I think, adopted it without due consideration of the present condition of the other fine arts, will have to encounter serious, and, perhaps, unforeseen difficulties from the painters and sculptors. Were some gifted sculptor to apply himself to architecture, I am persuaded he would drive us all out of the field, for the charm with which that art is capable of investing architecture by a skilful union of the flesh-like sculpture with the hard bones of architecture, would produce an irresistibly fascinating effect.

From this long letter you will collect that, whilst on the other hand I do not mean to be confined either to a servile imitation of a pure Pompean house; so, on the other, I do not mean to be tied down to repeat your Elizabethan architecture, or the Gothic of Germany or England. Nor do I propose to give you a fac-simile of any building of the Renaissance school. To the best of my power, I propose (as the best style) that which adopts the pure broad principles of beauty in building, and which were, I sincerely believe, best propounded by the Greeks; and which all experience has shewn to be best suited to receive addition from the highest style of painting and sculpture; and which are, in fact, parts of architecture. How far I may succeed is another point.

It is indeed difficult in all cases, even to select what is best; but with the most lofty aspirations, I am aware that I may indeed fall very short of the execution of my wishes; perhaps, I have already done myself some harm in this very discussion of style, by preparing you to expect too much

Yours, &c. A. C.