No. II.

We spent last Sunday at Figgins’s at Brixton, No. 2, Albert Terrace, Woodbine Lane. A hearty fellow: good glass of port: prime cigar: snug box in the garden: and a bus every five minutes at the end of the road: a regular A.1. place for a Sunday out, and home again in an hour and a half to our paradise at ——; but we are not going to give you our address, or we should be pestered to death with your visits. Suffice it to say that Figgins’s is a good specimen of a citizen’s villa near London. Now, there are several kinds of villas: there is the villa near London, and the villa not near: there is the villa in a row, and the detached villa: there is your lodge, and your park, and your grange, and your cottage ornÉe; and best of all, in our opinion, there is—what is neither the one nor the other of all these—there is the plain old-fashioned country-house:—once a cottage, then a farm, then a gentleman’s house: irregular, odd, picturesque, unpretending, comfortable, and convenient. But Figgins’s is a new slap-up kind of affair; built within the last two years, and uniting in itself all the last improvements and the most recent elegancies. He has settled himself in a neighbourhood quite the genteelest of that genteel district: for, though merchants and men of yesterday, so to speak, the people of Albert Terrace show that they have respect for the good times of yore, and they admire the character of the fine old English gentleman: they pride themselves, moreover, on being a steady set of people, and they show their respect for things ancient even in the outward arrangements of their dwellings. Thus you enter each of the twenty little gardens surrounding each of the twenty little detached houses, through gates with Norman pillars at their sides, that would have done honour to Durham or Canterbury; while the wooden barriers themselves are none of your radical innovations on the Greek style, nor any of your old impious fox-hunting five-bars, but beautiful pieces of fretwork, copied from the stalls of Exeter Cathedral, painted so nicely in oak, and so well varnished, that Stump the painter must have out-stumped himself in their execution. Once within the gate, however, and the connecting wall—capped, we ought to have said, with a delicious Elizabethan cornice—all Gothic formality ends for the while; and you are lost in astonishment at the serpentine meanderings, the flowing lines, and the thousand attractions of the garden. An ill-natured friend, who went with us, took objection at the weeping ash, in the middle of the circular grass-plot in front of the door; but he altered his mind in the evening, when he found the chairs ranged under its sociable branches—and the Havannahs and sherry-coblers crowding the little table made to fit round the central stem. ’Twas a wrinkle that which he was not up to:—he was a Goth—a cockney. Figgins, though a Londoner, knows what’s what, in matters of that kind; and shows his good taste in such a practical combination of the utile with the dulce. On either side of the house, the pathways ran off with the most mysterious windings among the rhododendrons and lilac bushes, and promised a glimpse of better things in the garden behind, when we should have passed through our host’s atrium, aula, porticus, and viridarium. Figgins’s house has its main body, or corps de logis, composed of two little bits of wings, and a wee little retiring centre—the former have their gables capped with the most elaborate “barge-boards,” as the architects term them, all fretwork and filigree, and swell out below into bay windows, with battlements at top big enough for Westminster Abbey. The centre has a narrow and exceedingly Gothic doorway, and one tiny bit of a window over it, through which no respectably-sized mortal has any chance of getting his head: and again over this is a goodly shield, large enough to contain the blazoned arms of all the Figginses. The builder has evidently gone upon the plan of making the most of his design in a small compass; but he has committed the absurdity first of allowing subsidiary parts to become principals, and then of making the ornaments more important than the spaces: thus the centre is squeezed to death like a nut in a pair of crackers, and battlements, boards, and shield “engross us whole,” by the obtrusiveness of their size and workmanship. Nevertheless, this faÇade, such as it is, struck us as beating Johnson’s house, in Paragon Place, all to nothing: there was something like the trace of an idea in it, there was an aim, or a pretension, at something: whereas the other is really nothing at all, and its appearance indicates absolute vacuity in the central cerebral regions of its inventor. Figgins has two good rooms on the ground floor, a lobby and staircase between them, to keep the peace between their occupants, three good bed-rooms on his first, and four very small ones up amongst his gables: add to which, that he boasts of what he calls his future dressing-room, but what his wife says is to be her boudoir—we forget where—but somewhere up the stairs. All this again is much better than the Paragon Place plan—it shows that men recover somewhat of their natural good sense when they get into country air.

Figgins has not got a great deal of room in his villa, it is true; but he and his nineteen neighbours are all suitably lodged; and when they all go up to the Bank every morning in the same omnibus, can congratulate themselves on emerging each from his own undivided territory; or when they all come down again in the afternoon, each in a different vehicle—(you never meet the same faces in the afternoon that you do in the morning trip: we know not why, but so it is, and the fact should be signalized to the Statistical Society)—they can each perambulate their own eighth of an acre with their hands under their coat-tails in solemn dignity; or their wife, while awaiting their arrival, and listening to the beef-steaks giving an extra fiz, wanders round and round again, or, like a Virgil’s crow,

If Figgins had but insisted on having the back of his residence plastered and painted to look more natural than stone, the same as the front—or, better still, if his ambition could have contented itself with the plain unsophisticated original brick, we should say nothing against his taste—’tis peculiar certainly, but he’s better off than Johnson.

On the opposite side of Woodbine Lane, some wretch of a builder is going to cut off the view of the Albert Terrace people all over the narrow field, as far as the brick kilns, by erecting a row of contiguous dwellings some three or four storeys high, besides garrets, and they are to be in the last Attic style imported. One word is enough for them: the man who knowingly and voluntarily goes out of town to live in a house in a row, like those lines of things in the Clapham Road or at Hammersmith, deserves to be sent with his house to “eternal smash;” he is an animal below the range of Æsthetics, and is not worth remonstrating with.

One of these next days, when we take our hebdomadal excursion, we intend going to see old Lady de Courtain at Lowlands Abbey, near ——; you can get to it in about twenty minutes by the Great Western. It is no abbey in reality, you know; there never was any Foundation on the spot further than what Sam Curtain, when he was an upholsterer in Finsbury, and before he got knighted, had laid down in the swampy meadow which he purchased, and thus bequeathed to his widow: but it’s all the same; it looks like an abbey;—that is to say, there are plenty of turrets, and the windows have all labels over their heads, and there are two Gothic conservatories, and two Gothic lodges at each of the two Gothic gates; and there is a sham ruin at the end of the “Lake:” and if this is not as good as a real abbey, we should like to know what is. Old Lady de Courtain was perfectly justified in Normanizing her name and her house:—why should she not? she had plenty of money: had she been a man, she could have bought a seat for half a dozen boroughs, and might even have gone a step higher; but, as it is, she has married her eldest daughter to the eldest son of Sir Thomas Humbug, a new Whig baronet; and she calls her house as she pleases. We applaud the old lady’s spirit; she has two other daughters still on the stocks, and she gives good dinners; we shall certainly go and patronize her. Comfort for comfort, we are not quite sure but that we had rather take up our quarters with John Bold, Esq., at Hazel House, on the top of the hill opposite. It is quite a different-looking mansion, and yet the rooms are laid out nearly on the same plan: in the one all is Gothic, in the other all is classic: one is be-fretted, and be-pinnacled, and be-shafted, and be-buttressed; but the other has a good plain Tuscan portico, like St Paul’s in Covent-Garden—plain windows wide and high, at enormous distances from each other—sober chimney-pots, that look as if they were really meant to be smoked, and not a single gimcrack or fanciful device any where about the building. It’s only a brick house plastered, after all; but it has a certain air of ease and comfort and respectability about it, that corresponds to a nicety with the character of its worthy inmate. If the door were wide enough, you might turn a coach and pair in the dining-room; there is a good, wide, low-stepped staircase; you may come down it four-a-breast, and four steps at a time, if you like—and if it were well behaved so to do, but it isn’t; and your bedroom would make two of Figgins’s drawing-rooms, lobby and all. The house always looks to us as if it would last longer than Lady de Courtain’s; and so we think it will; just as we doubt not but that honest John Bold’s dirty acres will be all in their proper places when Lady de C.’s three per cents shall be down at forty-two again, and her houses in the city shall be left empty by their bankrupt tenants. They live, too, in a very different way, and in widely distinct circles: at the Abbey you meet many an ex-civic notoriety, and many a rising hope of Lombard Street: it is a perpetual succession of dinners, dances, and picnics: at the House you are sure to be introduced to some sober-faced, top-booted, elderly gentleman or other, and to one or two rotund black-skirted individuals; and you find a good horse at your service every morning, or the keeper is ready for you in proper time and season; and sometimes the county member calls in, or a quorum of neighbouring magistrates sit there in solemn conclave. One is the house of to-day, the other of yesterday: one keeps up the reminiscences of the town, and of a peculiar part of the town, rather too strongly; the other actually smells of the country, and, though so near the metropolis, has nothing with it in common. Their owners, when they go to town, live, one in the Regent Park, the other in Park Lane.

Another acquaintance of ours—and this we will say that we are proud of being known to him—dwells in an old-fashioned gloomy house at Petersham. It is a respectable old gentleman in a brown coat, black shorts, white waistcoat, and a pigtail; and is a member of the Royal Society as well as of the Society of Antiquarians. The house in question suits him, and he suits the house; it was built in the time of that impudent intriguing Dutchman who came over here and drove out his uncle and beau-pÈre; and it accordingly possesses all the heavy dignity of the Dutch houses of that period. The windows are pedimented and cased with mouldings; they are lofty and sufficiently numerous; the doorway has two cherubs flying, with cabbages and roses round the shell that hangs over it; and the lawns are still cut square, and have queer-shaped beds and parterres. There is something dignified and solemn in the very bricks of the mansion, wearing as they do a more regular and sombre hue of red than the dusty-looking things of the present day; and when you once get into the spacious rooms, all floored and pannelled with oak, you feel a glow of veneration for olden times—though not for those times—that you cannot define, but which is nevertheless excessively pleasing. While sitting in the well-stored library of this mansion, you expect to see Addison walking in at the one door, and Swift at another; and you are not quite sure but that you may have to meet Bolingbroke at dinner, and take a glass of wine with Prior or Pope. There are numberless large cupboards all over the place; you could sit inside any of the fireplaces, if the modern grates were, as we wish them, removed: and as for opening or slamming a door in a hurry, it is not to be done; they are too heavy; no such impertinences can ever be tolerated in such a residence. And then our friend himself—we could tell you such a deal about him, but we are writing about houses, not men—you must go and get introduced to him yourself. Let it be put down in your pocket memoranda, whenever you hear of a house of this kind to let, either take it yourself or recommend somebody else whom you have a regard for to do so. It is not a handsome, stylish kind of house; but it is one of the right sort to live in.

Very little is to be said in blame, much in praise, of the majority of English country gentlemen’s houses; if atrocities of taste be committed any where, it is principally near the metropolis, where people are only half-and-half rural, or rather are of that rus-in-urbe kind, that is in its essence thoroughly cockney. There is every variety of mansion throughout the land, every combination of style, and more often the absence of all style at all; and in most cases the houses, at least the better kind of them, are evidently made to suit the purposes of the dweller rather than the architect. This ought to be the true rule of building for all dwellings, except in the cases of those aristocratic palaces or chÂteaux where the public character of the owner requires a sacrifice of private convenience to public dignity. Houses that are constructed in accordance with the requirements of those that are to live in them, and that are suited to the exigencies of their ground and situation, are sure to please longer, and to gratify the taste of a greater number of persons, than those which are the mere embodyings of an architect’s portfolio. This, however, requires that the principles of the architect should be allowed to vary from the strict proportions of the classic styles;—or rather, that he should be allowed to copy the styles of civil architecture, whether of Greece or Rome, or of ancient Europe. The fault hitherto has been, that designers of houses have taken all their ideas, models, and measurements from the religious rather than the civil buildings of antiquity; and that they have thought the capitals of the Jupiter Stator more suited to an English gentleman’s residence than the capricious yet elegant decorations of a villa at Pompeii. In the same way, until very lately, those who call themselves “Gothic Architects” have been putting into houses windows from all the cathedrals and monasteries of the country, but have seldom thought of copying the more suitable details of the many mansions and castellated houses that still exist. Better sense and better taste are now beginning to prevail, and we observe excellent houses rising around us. Of these, by far the larger proportion are in the styles of the Middle Ages; and for this reason, that the architects who practise in those styles have a wider field to range in for their models, and have also more thoroughly emancipated themselves from their former professional thraldom. There is also a very decided reaction in the public taste in favour of the arts of the Middle Ages, or rather let us say, in favour of a style of national architecture;—and as the Greek and Roman styles have little to connect them with the historical associations of an Englishman’s mind, they have fallen into comparative disfavour. For one purely classic house now erected, there are three or four Gothic. The worst of it is, however, that from the low state into which architecture had fallen by the beginning of the present century, and even for some time afterwards, there has been no sufficient space and opportunity for creating a number of good architects adequate to meet the demands of the public; and hence, the greatest barbarisms are being daily perpetrated, even with the best intentions of doing the correct thing, both on the part of the man who orders a building, and of him who builds. Architecture is a science not to be acquired in a day, nor by inspiration;—nor will the existence of one eminent man in that profession immediately cause a hundred others of the same stamp to rise up around him. On the contrary, it requires a long course of scientific study, and of actual scientific practice; it demands that a great quantity of traditionary precepts be kept up, and handed down from master to pupil through many generations of students and practitioners: it requires the accumulation of an enormous number of good instances and examples; and in most cases it is to be polished by long foreign travel. Now, all this cannot be accomplished in an impromptu, off-hand manner: the profession of architecture requires to be raised and kept up at a certain height of excellence through many long years: it is like the profession of medicine, of law, or the study of all scientific matters: when once the school of architecture declines, the practice of it declines in the same ratio, and the resuscitation of it becomes a work of considerable time. Such a regenerating of architecture is going on amongst us: comparatively more money is now laid out on buildings than at any preceding period for the last hundred years: our architects are becoming more scientific and more accomplished: the profession is occupying a higher rank than it has lately done; and we may, therefore, hope for an increasing proportion of satisfactory results. If only the public eye be cultivated and refined in a similar degree, we may reasonably expect that some beautiful and notable works will be executed.

Not, however, to launch forth into the wide question of architectural fitness and beauty, we will confine our observations to two special topics; one concerning the ornamentation of architectural objects, the other concerning the materials used in private dwellings.

Thank goodness for it! but people are now beginning to see rather further than six inches beyond their noses, and to find out that if they adopt ornament as the starting point, and usefulness as the goal of their architectural course, they are likely to end in the committing of some egregious folly. Private persons are more convinced of this truth than public ones; and the unprofessional crowd more than professed architects. In the one case, as ornament costs dear, the pocket puts an effectual drag on the vagaries of taste; whereas, in the other, public money is most commonly spent without any virtual control: and again, all architects are liable to descend to the prettinesses of their profession rather than abide by the great qualities of properly balanced proportion and design. A bad architect, too, is always seeking after ornament to conceal his mistakes of construction. In private houses, therefore, the superabundance of bad ornament that was adopted after a period of its almost total disuse is now giving way to a moderate employment of it; but, in public buildings, the rage for covering blank spaces, and for getting rid of sharp edges or corners, still continues. Persons who have not inquired practically into the matter can hardly believe how very meagre is the stock of ornament with which nine architects out of ten set up in their trade; looking at what they usually employ in the Greek or Roman style, we observe that the details are generally debased clumsy copies of antiques, jumbled together with much incongruity, and commonly altered in proportions. We do not apply this to capitals and bases, which are now worked with tolerable precision, though even in these we observe a heaviness of hand and eye that detracts greatly from their effect; we refer more particularly to mouldings, and to the decoration of cornices and friezes. Any one who has visited the galleries of the Vatican, or wandered over the Acropolis of Athens, will recollect the broad freedom and spirit with which the most graceful details are treated, and the total absence of stiffness or heaviness in any of the designs; whereas, whoever takes the trouble of lounging about London must prepare his eye for that overload of thick heavy ornament which characterises what is now called the English style. The foliage of Greece and Italy was well worked in those countries, because the objects represented by the architectural sculptor were familiar to his own and to the public eye; his own eye committed no blunder, nor would the public eye have tolerated it. In the application, too, of the human form to sculptured ornament, the proportions and harmonies of the body were too well known and felt to allow of any egregious errors taking place; hence, even in the decorating a frieze, the wonderful taste and skill of the Greek and Roman artists fully appear; whereas, in the hands of the English sculptor, such objects are purely mythical—he knows them only by imagination, not by reality, and he properly designates them as “fancy objects.” Hence their clumsiness, their heaviness, and their incongruity. In all the ordinary details of modern common house-building, the mouldings and enrichments ordinarily used are of a very poor description; decorators lived for a long time on the slender stores of the puerile and meretricious embellishments adopted from the French, and translated, if we may so say, for the use of the English public;—they had lost the boldness and originality which made the style of Louis XIV. tolerable, or rather agreeable; and they had substituted in its place the poorest and the cheapest kind of details that could be worked. Let any one go and find out a house in London, built between 1780 and 1810, and he will instantly remark the meagreness of which we are speaking. Grosvenor Square and the adjacent streets abound with houses of this kind; so does Portland Place. Carlton House was one of the most notable examples. In the stead of this, after the war, came in a flood of Greek ornament; every thing Roman was thrown aside; all was to be either Doric or Attic, with an occasional admixture of the Egyptian: the Greek zig-zag, the Greek honey-suckle and acanthus, Doric flutings and flat bands for cornices, swarmed all over the land. Many an honest builder must have broken his heart on the occasion, for his old ornament-books were no longer of use; and he had, as it were, to learn his trade all over again. From poor Batty Langley, with his five orders of Gothic architecture, who was the type of architects towards the end of the last century, down to Nash, Smirke, and Wilkins, who had it all their own way at the beginning of the present, such was the commutation and revolution of ornamental propriety. These styles were not the only ones that had to go through changes of accessory parts, and to suffer from the caprices of those that dressed them up for public exhibition: the revivers of the mediÆval styles, the new and old Gothic men, ran also their race of absurdity and clumsy invention. It was long—very long, before they could make any approach towards a proper understanding of the spirit of their predecessors: all was to them a thorough mystery: and it is actually only within the last ten years that any tolerable accuracy has been attained in such matters. Norman capitals used to be put on shafts of the 15th century, and perpendicular corbels used in early English buildings: as for the tracery of windows, it was “confusion worse confounded”—architects there ran quite mad. In these classes of ornamental forms, the faults of awkward and ignorant imitators have been equally apparent: for just as English sculptors have made the Greek acanthus and olive twine and enwreath themselves like Dutch cabbages and crab-trees, so the modern Gothics have made their water-lilies, their ivy, their thistle, and their oak-leaves twist and frizzle in prÆternatural stiffness—while their griffins and heraldic monsters have ramped and regarded and displayed in the most awful and mysterious manner. Gothic decorators, too, fell into the mistake of over-ornamenting their objects far more than the pseudo-classical men did: what used to be called Gothic ornament in 1820—no longer ago than that—is now so intolerable that many an expensive building requires to be re-erected ere it can square with the laws of common sense and good taste. Gothic furniture-makers went wild in their peculiar art; and there are still numberless magnificent drawing-rooms that require to be entirely unfurnished ere their owners can lay claim to any portion of decorative discernment. Eton Hall and Fonthill (while the latter stood) were two notable instances of this lamentable excess of Gothic absurdity. Windsor Castle is by no means free from blame; and in fact there is hardly a Gothic house in England, of modern date, that does not require the severe hand of the architectural reformer.

To hit the due medium in such matters is not easy; and the reason is, that in architecture we are all imitators, not originators: we are all aiming at renovating old things and restoring old buildings, rather than at inventing new ones: and the result is, that architectural genius and invention are thereby closely cramped and thwarted. To imitate all the details of an old style in the closest manner is indispensable when ancient buildings are to be restored, or when an exact facsimile is to be produced in some new work: but for the ornamental powers of the architect to be perpetually tied down to one set class of forms, is to lower him to the level of a Chinese artist.

Unless we are mistaken, it appears to us that the Greeks imitated nature in her most perfect and abstract forms of beauty: and that they, with their successors the Romans, or rather the later Greeks, sought for beautiful objects as adapted to architectural ornament, wherever they could find them. They were not prevented by any traditional or conventional proprieties from imitating and using the beautiful and the natural wherever they might exist: all the varied forms of nature would have come right to them had they been willing. They seem, however, not to have taken so wide a range as we should have expected; or else their works that have come down to us are so few in number that their choice seems to have been rather restricted. The Middle Age architects also took a wide or rather a free range in the forms of the vegetable and animal world: but they worked with barbarous eyes and stiff hands; nor till the twelfth century do they seem to have arrived at that artistical freedom and correctness which are requisite to interpret and to imitate the multiplex forms of the natural world. As for the human figure, they confined themselves principally to draperied forms; and they embued these with considerable elegance; nevertheless, through all their operations, we trace a want of anatomical knowledge, which not all their ready invention can conceal, and which is scarcely compensated by the value of their sculpture, as a contemporaneous illustration of mediÆval history. Heraldry seems always to have been a mystic and a mythic art; and hence heraldic forms have a certain privilege of caricature and distortion from which it is in vain to try to emancipate them.

Such being the case, it becomes a question—how should modern ornament be composed? In the classic style, are we always to adhere to foreign foliage, foreign animals, and mythological figures: and in the Gothic style, are we always to preserve the same rigidity and distortion which prevailed as long as those styles were in actual practice? We apprehend the true rule of Æsthetics in this case to be, as we implied before, that for restorations or exact facsimiles of buildings, whether classical or mediÆval, the very form as well as the spirit of the ornaments contemporaneously used in such buildings should be most strictly adopted. An imitation, unless it is an exact one, is good for nothing, as far as architecture is concerned. But should we prevail on ourselves either to depart from these styles, or to carry out their main principles, so as to form a national style of our own—not a fixed one, but a style varying through different ages, suiting itself to the social requirements of each—then we should be prepared, not only to call in the aid of natural beauty to the fullest extent, but also to avail ourselves of all that rich fund of form which results from the extensive use of scientific knowledge, and the investigation of physical curves. There is no reason why such a style, or succession of styles, should not be formed, if the great principles of science and utility be taken as the substructure on which imagination may afterwards raise its enrichment: and, if ever it come into existence, we have the unlimited expanse of the universe to range through in search of beauty and harmony. It is impossible to say what changes the introduction of new mathematical forms may not produce, and produce with good effect: thus the beautiful curve of the catena would not have been known, but for the introduction of suspension bridges. The application of the cycloid is comparatively modern, though the curve itself is ancient; and the grand effect of the horizontal line was not fully known—despite of Greece and Rome—till our interminable lines of railroad had stretched their lengths across the land. In the same way, our more extended and more intimate knowledge of the animal and vegetable kingdom ought to furnish us with an immense variety of new and beautiful forms of ornament—we do not mean of mythic or fanciful ornament, but of that highest and best kind of decoration, absolute, and yet partial, imitation of nature. Thus, for example, have we a blank space, extending horizontally to a long distance, which we desire to cover with enrichments. We have our choice, either in mathematical forms and combination of forms, such as mediÆval architects might have applied, or else we may throw along it wreaths and branches of foliage, peopled with insect life, or enlivened by birds and animals. A succession of simple oak-branches or laurel-leaves, or the shoots of any other common plants, faithfully imitated, and cut into mimic life, from the inanimate stone, would form an ornament of the most effective kind, and would constitute a work of art, being an intelligent and poetical interpretation of natural beauty. In the building of our houses, why should the straight line and sections of the circle be the only lines admissible for doors, windows, and roofs? Why should the Greek and Roman ovolo, cavetto, and square, be the only combination that we know of in our common mouldings? How much richer were the architects of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who drew with “free hands,” and gave us such exquisite effects of light and shade! We are firmly persuaded, that an architect, deeply imbued with the scientific principles of his profession, and endowed, at the same time, with the hand and the eye of a skilful artist, may cause a most happy and useful reformation of our national architecture.

In our choice of materials for our common buildings, it appears that we are always struggling with a deficiency of pecuniary means: for we never yet met an architect whose skill was not thwarted, in this respect, by the necessities of his employer. Such a man would have built a splendid palace, only he was not allowed to use stone; another would have made a magnificent hall, had he been able to employ oak instead of deal. Whenever people are so situated that they are restricted in their choice of materials, they should remember that they are immediately limited, both in construction and in decorative forms; and, being so limited, it becomes an absurdity in them to aim at any thing that is unreal, any thing that is in fact beyond their means. This has been one of the curses of all architectural and ornamental art in modern times, that every thing has been imitative, fictitious, sham, make-believe:—brick is stuccoed to look like stone, and fir is painted to look like oak. It is impossible for art to flourish when an imitative object can be accepted in the place of original ones; for when once public taste becomes so much vitiated as to be easily satisfied with cheap copies of the real instead of the real itself, the productive faculties of the artist and the manufacturer take a wrong turn, and go directly to increase rather than diminish the evil. On architecture, the effects of a corrupted national desire for the cheap and the easily made are peculiarly disastrous: this being the least suited of all arts to any thing like deception, since, to be good, it must be essentially real and true. Hence it has arisen, that instead of being content with humble brick, and learning how to convert that material to purposes of ornamentation, the use of stucco and cement has become universal—materials totally unsuited to our country and climate. The decorative portion of architecture has fallen into the same track, and elaborate looking things in plaster, and fifty other substances—in the production of which art has had no share—have come to cover our ceilings and our walls. Had not, indeed, the repairs and erection of public buildings called forth the dormant skill of our workmen, decorative art had long since become extinct amongst us. It may therefore be taken as a fundamental rule in architecture, that the decorations of buildings should be made either of the same materials as the edifices themselves, or that more costly substances should be combined with the former, and should serve for the decorator to exercise his skill on. Thus the combination of stone with brick, an old-fashioned expedient, is good, because it is justified by all the exigencies of constructive skill, and because it is founded on common sense. Look for what effective buildings may be thus produced at Lincoln’s Inn, the Temple, St James’s, and several of our colleges in the universities: how intrinsically superior are these to the flimsy shabby buildings of Regent Street and its Park: even old Buckingham House was good in comparison with some of these. Or go to Hampton Court and Kensington, and see how much grandeur may be produced by proportions and well-combined decoration, without any cement, stucco, or paint, to bedizen the walls. If a man cannot be content to adopt plain brick with such instances as these before his eyes, let him travel forth a little, and see what the effect of the great brick buildings is in Holland, or the south-west of France, where the most admirable churches and public edifices are all erected of this material. Sculptured ornament is of course out of the question in such a case as this: nothing but stone will bear the chisel and mallet to produce any effect that shall satisfy the eye and the judgment of the lover of natural beauty.

We protest strongly against all terra-cotta imitations of sculptural forms; but for geometrical figure they are allowable, and their stiffness, if justified by sufficient solidity, will be found highly suitable for buildings of such a kind.

Whenever the means of the employer are ample enough, let him make up his mind to sink a little additional capital, and build a good stone house, that shall last him and his family for a couple of centuries, instead of a rickety edifice, that can endure for only a couple of generations. And, in this case, let him call in the decorative aid of the architect, to whatever amount his taste dictates. Ornament, to be effective, need not be abundant; it should be employed sparingly rather than the contrary; and, if kept in its proper place, and limited to its due purposes, it will reward its owner’s eye, and will prove a permanent source of artificial satisfaction. Good stone-work without, and good oak-work within, will make a house that a prince may live in. A good house, well built and well decorated, is like a good coat—there is some pleasure in wearing it; it will last long, and look well the whole time; it will bear reparation; and (though we cannot say the same of any short-cut, upper Benjamin, or jacket we ever wore—we wish we could) it will always fetch the price given for it. We have plenty of the finest stone and timber within this snug little island of ours, and it is entirely our own fault that we are not one of the best-built people in the universe.