Page:Alexis de Chateauneuf - The Country House.djvu/37

 from any attempt actually to devise and construct a forgery, but to avail themselves to a certain degree of the associations to be derived from the recollections associated with the buildings of former ages, and in the construction of which, at least, the most skill and talent had been employed; and again perhaps, the very clumsy and unsuccessful adaptation of the principles of the revived Grecian and Roman, or Palladian architecture, to our modern houses, (especially in the smaller ones,) may have tended to keep alive the prejudice in favour of that style, which even if it were not the best, was at least the best executed; more especially in its adaptation to the fitness of domestic arrangements and comfort. Whilst I have been advocating the merits of our Elizabethan houses, you must not suppose I refer to the multitudes of grotesque little villas which grow up every summer round London; or to those alterations and adaptations, by which one sees Gothic spires, plastered over with stucco, starting up out of one half of an old farm house; the walls notched into battlements, and uncouth animals set a grinning against each other over the gate posts, and the hall crammed and fortified with rusty swords and pikes of all ages and fashions. And on the other half, Venetian windows slices of pilasters, balustrades, and other parts of Italian architecture. Although I have not such a greedy appetite for every thing Gothic, as Horace Walpole had, yet I own I partake somewhat of his feelings, as expressed in a letter from Stowe, when he says, "The Grecian Temple is glorious, this, I openly worship, but in the heretical corner of my heart I adore the Gothic building." Though I own the character he gives of the Gothic building he so adores is barbarous enough, for he says, "That some unusual inspiration of Gibbs has made it pure and venerable, with a propensity to the Venetian, or Moresque Gothic; and the great column near it puts me in mind of the Place of St. Mark." Strawberry Hill, however, is a sufficient proof of his knowledge and taste for pure Gothic. There is one point on which I entirely agree, which is that the style of decoration should be consistent with the style of the architecture. I think we have been more deficient in attention to the style of decoration, than even to the choice of the style of the building itself; and nothing is now more common than to plaster the walls of a modern London house with the Gothic paper of Henry VII.'s Chapel, and to fill it with a load of old carving of all ages and times; and to finish with a cart-load of Louis XIV.'s clocks, and other similar ornaments: but of this, more when we come to discuss the decoration of your rooms.