art, no children but his works, and dictated his will to his nephew in these few words,-"I leave my soul to God, my body to the earth, my estate to my kinsfolks." He strove for fame, and gained it. The aspiration is general; but how few attain their desire. As Sir Thomas Browne says,-" The greatest part must be contented to be as though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the records of man."

Of Palladio's works, saying nothing of those intermediate, you will remember many,-the Basilica at Vicenza, for example. He built churches, palaces, theatres, in all quarters; had a world-wide reputation; and gave his name to the sort of architecture which he used. He was unquestionably a great master, the chief of the modern school,-but introduced much that is bad. He and those who preceded him appear to have overlooked the truth, simplicity, and real beauties of the purer antique works remaining for their study, and indulged in littleness, vagaries, and deceits. Mr. Hope, Mr. Hosking, and other modern writers, have forcibly pointed out the weaknesses and errors of the style of architecture which this period produced. Mr. Ruskin, more recently, has poured out the vials of his wrath upon it, and calls it the "pestilent art of the Renaissance." Modern architects will have to travel in the same road, nevertheless, but should do it with the aid of the new lights they have. If they would look

back to the finest works of antiquity, master the immutable principles which these illustrate, and bring to bear, in the application of them, the same amount of skill and genius as was possessed by some of the cinque-centists, they might produce the style of architecture best adapted to supply the wants and answer the purposes of the day.

The province of the true architect, as of the true poet, is to uphold "the glorious priesthood of the honest and the beautiful."

A real style must grow gradually out of the country and the purposes for which its structures are required. An architect's province is to make the useful beautiful by fitting decoration-not to disguise it or to substitute for it something less useful and proper, because an ornament without trouble.

The excitement that prevailed at the time of which we are speaking in favour of the works and writings of antiquity, is strikingly illustrated in the account which has come down to us of the finding in Rome of the well-known group the "Laocoon." Crowds flocked to the Garden of Titus to identify it by a description which Pliny had given : bells rang; poets rhymed; and a fête was ordered for the following day, when the statue was carried in triumph to the Capitol, the people filling the streets, and songs of joy rending the air. The finder was made "notary apostolic," and endowed with part of the revenue arising from the tax on salt. All over the world the

same feeling was spread; and the discovery of a book of Livy, hunted for as if all future happiness depended on it, would have been hailed as an event of universal importance. Nothing went down that was not classical ::

"In shaggy spoils here Theseus was beheld,

And Perseus dreadful with Minerva's shield."

Then came into education the Pagan element; and there it is still-perhaps somewhat too much of it. Our boys are well grounded in the adventures of Jupiter, though they are taught nothing of the arts which have given form to the beautiful fables; they are made to know thoroughly all the labours of Hercules, to the exclusion sometimes of a knowledge of the labours of to-day, which are adorning, comforting, and lengthening life. The right or wrong in this, however, is a greater question than I may venture here to discuss.

After Palladio, Bernini and others ran wild, and absurdities of all sorts were committed.

The Reformation, I need not tell you, aided in leading to the abandonment of Gothic architecture in our country. This style came to be regarded as tending to maintain the superstitions and abuses the Reformers were striving to correct. Churches were spoiled or sold; statues broken, knocked out, carvings hewed down.

painted glass

"Destroy the

nests," said Knox, "and the crows will not come

back." The energy with which the work of demolition was carried on under the Parliament, rather later, is shown forcibly in the Journal of William Dowsing, who was appointed to destroy pictures and ornaments of churches in 1643:-" Bramford, Feb. 1st," says he, "we brake down 841 superstitious pictures." "Broke in pieces the rails;" "took down twenty cherubims ;" and "we broke in pieces the organ-cases," are recurring entries.

The mode of building which followed the decline of Gothic architecture in England, and preceded the complete introduction of Italian architecture, is known as Elizabethan, and presents a curious mixture of the two styles, which you may see in the example I gave you (fig. 35) in my last letter. This style belongs especially to the sixteenth century, when the nobility and men of wealth indulged themselves in the erection of enormous country-houses; but it extends to the seventeenth. Though often incongruous and unmeaning, the architecture of this period is exceedingly picturesque, and allowed of much greater convenience in residences than had been obtainable before. Audley Inn, Essex; Hatfield, Herts; and Wollaton Hall, in Nottinghamshire (1588), may be mentioned as good examples.

John Shute, "paynter and architecte," published "The first and chiefe Grounds of Architecture used in all the Ancient and Famous Monyments," in 1563; and John Thorpe built a large number of the Eliza