Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/614

600 clearly brought into the country by foreign architects, and in a great measure from Italy. The windows rapidly augmented themselves, till they soon occupied a predominant portion of the towers and fronts; the turrets became surmounted by domes, and by those bulbous domes which were often piled one above another. There were soon seen one tier of pillared or pilastered storey above another, in the Palladian or Paduan fashion. Turrets often gave way to scroll-work parapets; and instead of the house standing as heretofore on a level plain, it was elevated on a terrace, with broad and balustraded flights of steps, and all the adjuncts of fountains, statues, and balustraded esplanades, essential to the Italian garden.

The houses were still built round a court or quadrangle, and adorned with outer and inner gateways, while groined roofs and rich oriels still demonstrated the connecting link of descent from the Gothic. In fact, the architecture of the Tudor period is a singular yet often superb mixture of the Gothic and the Italian, with profusion of ornaments and ingraftment of parts which tell strongly of a more eastern origin. Nor does it appear that these foreign elements were introduced at the latter portion of this period only—they stand forth conspicuously in the very commencement of it. In the later years of the reign of Elizabeth we can point to noble houses which are more allied to the ancient Tudor, with its small windows and simple towers and roofs, than those of the Henrys VII. and VIII., who in their earlier days had a gorgeous and even fantastic taste for palatial architecture. For example, Hampton Court is far more simple and chaste than Richmond Palace, built by Henry VII., or Nonsuch, built by Henry VIII. Again, in family mansions, Wimbledon House, built in 1588, with its open court, its two descents of terraces, clearly Italian in character, is yet so chaste and simple, with its flat roof, its square slated towers, and mixture of small and large windows, that, compared to Nonsuch, as it has been, you at once see the violent contrast of the fanciful and the grave. Again, in Charlton House, in Kent, with its central entrance of Italian character, with two tiers of engaged columns, its ornamented parapets just verging into scroll-work, its turret windows of medium size, and its turret domes simple, and still plainer chimneys; or Holland House, built in 1607, without domes, but with ogee-gables; or Campden House, as it was built in 1612, with roof of plainest character, and pilastered entrance, we mark a far less ornate style than in the days of the Henrys. The whole of this period was one of a mixed style, in which different architects indulged themselves in employing more or less of one or other of the prevailing elements, according to their tastes; what is more strictly called Elizabethan being such houses as Wollaton or Hardwicke, in which the ample square windows, the square towers superseding the octagon ones of Nonsuch, the absence of the eastern-looking domes, and the presence of superb scroll-work give a fine and distinctive style.

Globe Theatre, Bankside.

The Palace of Richmond, as built by Henry VII., with its projecting towers occupied almost entirely with windows, and its roof presenting an immense number of double domes, a smaller one surmounting a lantern placed on the larger domes, had an air more Saracenic than English; but the Palace of Nonsuch, built by Henry VIII., outdid that in the singularity of its style, and was the wonder of its age. It was built round a quadrangle, and the front flanked by octagonal towers, which, at the height of the ordinary roof, rose, by a demi-arch expanding over the lower one, into three more storeys, and upon these, lesser towers of two storeys, surmounted by domes and fanes. All the lower storeys were divided into compartments by pilasters and bands, these compartments embellished by figures and groups in bas-relief. The lower part of this palace was of stone, the upper of wood. Hentzner, the German traveller, became quite enthusiastic in describing it as a palace in which everything that architecture could perform seemed to have been accomplished; and says that it was "so encompassed with parks full of deer, delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure,