Page:Alexis de Chateauneuf - The Country House.djvu/36

 and the superior beauty of the simple and grand lines of Grecian architecture; and my curiosity to see the mode in which you will follow out your precepts by your example, is hourly increasing, although I am quite aware that one specimen of a building will not be sufficient to illustrate the general positions you have, I think, so well established.

I almost wish that you had been tempted to extend your letter, already long, for the purpose of entering still further into a subject of such interest. I should be curious to learn to what extent the arts of painting and sculpture had been applied, in conjunction with the Gothic; and where they had most failed, and to ascertain whether those instances fully corroborate your positions. As regards your oracular distinction between the two styles, I am not sure I quite understand you. I shall, however, leave this till the termination of the discussion of the plan. The merits of the arrangements and contrivances of the ancient villas, as ascertainable from the descriptions extant, and the plans of those of Pompeii had not entirely escaped me. In addition to the published information, I recollect to have received, many years since, much information and instruction on the subject from Mr. Cocherell, soon after his return from Italy; he having devoted much attention to the arrangement of ancient villas, and having selected some very interesting materials to illustrate the ingenuity of the contrivances, and the judicious selection of the sites, &c.

Every part of your letter is tantalizing, and makes me regret that you have merely touched on subjects of such deep interest; whilst reading it, I forgot that I had commissioned you to give me the plan of a house, not to write a complete treatise on ancient and modern architecture. Conceding to you the choice of the style, convinced by your reasons and arguments in favour of its superior beauty and capability, I own to you I do so reluctantly, not without a sigh, and not without much hesitation. Although, abstractedly, a building constructed on the principles you advocate, may have more beauty than our own Gothic or Elizabethan, and may be more susceptible of a union of the three arts; yet there is one part of the subject to which you have not adverted, and on which, perhaps, you are not likely to feel so strongly as we do in England, the most aristocratic country in the world. Some of our most beautiful houses are in this the rejected style, and with them are connected all the prejudices and associations of antiquity, of ancestral dignity and greatness; and a house of this kind carries the mind back to other times, and awakens recollections that it has been enjoyed by a long line of ancestry, and hence, perhaps, has in a great degree arisen the desire of many who have built modern houses, to imitate those of the elder time; not indeed