requisite, I fear it may, to superadd, that the furniture should harmonize with itself through all its parts; that gaudy and ill assorted colors, awkward forms, and even elegant forms and foldings, in that kind of display which may deserve the epithet meretricious, however warranted by the fashion of the day, should be avoided. With what ideas do that nakedness of the female figure, and that abundant complexity, that mys-. tery of folding, of the drapery about the room to receive such figures, as we have been accustomed to see, harmonize? Fashion indeed is powerful, and sometimes grossly perverse. What could be reasonably done with the human head during the century and more of the successive fashions of the fullbottomed wig, the aile-de-pigeon hair-dressing, and all that intervened and followed, till wigs and hair-dressing were both abolished? Fashion, it must be confessed, has a strange power of fascination, which even strong minds have difficulty wholly to resist, even when that power is exerted most in opposition to evident reason. But it is only when a fashion has obtained universal and lasting prevalence that reason is so compelled to submit to it. Generally large choice is open. Reason and better taste may well venture upon opposition to partial and ephemerid absurdities, and with due exertion, would prevent their gaining any overbearing ascendency.

LETTER XXXIV.

Sense and Nonsense in Architecture.

You remind me of our conversation upon sense and nonsense in architecture, and of my promise to you of some remarks of my northern friend on the subject. I will endeavour to keep my promise; but, as on some other wide subjects I have thought it prudent to be concise, so on this also I shall avoid any great dilation.

Common-sense is not ostentatious: often it escapes observation; ordinarily it is without prominent parts and strong colors to draw the unwary eye. Perhaps it may be most easily, if not most advantageously pointed out by contrast with its opposite, Nonsense, which I will therefore endeavour to describe.

Nonsense in architecture is principally observable in the misapplication of forms, invented for use, where they are strikingly useless intruders; or, sometimes, where they are even inconvenient, and obviously adverse to use. For instance, the Pediment is a form which common-sense would, without hesitation, propose for the front of the Grecian temple, or of any building whose plan, like that of the Grecian temple, is a simple parallelogram, with the entrance not on the longside,

but at the end. There the pediment form is as useful as graceful; giving the simplest construction of roof, and, by that construction, affording the convenience of throwing the drip of rain away from the entrance. How frequently this form is ill intruded will I think occur to any who may give any attention to the subject.

I remember it your just observation that, in the works of inferior designers, sense and nonsense appear to depend much upon the material. Stone, imperiously demanding respect for use and reason, is adverse to nonsense. Timber, in the office of a supporting material, hardly less requires strict and ingenious consideration of reason. But, through its readiness to find support, it affords large opportunity for the spirit of ornament and the passion for winning admiration to introduce nonsense. But of all ostensible materials, plaster, or stucco, offers the most boundless field. I highly respect the late invention, called Roman cement; but I dread the perversion of its good qualities to ill purposes, to which its accommodating temper makes it liable. Already in London, so good and evil are blended, through the readiness with which it lends itself to the rage for novelty and variety, absurdities begin to strike the eye in almost every

street.

Nonsense however may too often be seen even in stonework. I have observed, in a former letter,

that, over openings, as doors and windows, which a single stone, in a rectilinear form, might securely cover, our forefathers laid such a stone. If the opening was too wide for their art to apply a sufficient single stone, they put two, or more, as occasion might be, forming some kind of arch. But I remember my northern friend speaking of a park-gate lodge, somewhere on the great northern road, with the lintel of its window formed of a very sufficient single stone, yet not allowed the rectilinear form, with which it would have retained most strength and fitness for its purpose: in emulation,' he said, 'of the fashionable Sara'cenico-Gothic taste, it was cut into more wrinkles, than a writhing eel could take while skinning.'

Yet,

A thing so strikingly singular, given on a great road to public view, is of course offered for public admiration, at the risk of reprobation. where choice of matter suited to the illustration wanted, occurs, I should rather take a public building for criticism, and to such I will now proceed.

to

It happened to me to have occasion to go Portsmouth, to attend a young kinsman embarking for military service, when my northern friend arrived there on his journey of curiosity. After viewing the great objects with which that place and its neighbourhood abound, we agreed to return northward by the way of Winchester. My

friend's remarks on the fortifications, from Dover to Portsmouth inclusive, would well deserve a volume; for, though he quitted the army young, his mind has been always much given to military subjects. They are however beyond our present purpose; but at Winchester occurred what I will relate.

We had been highly gratified with the cathedral of that city, and were going toward the castle, when a glimpse of a large new building caught my friend's eye, and he would turn into the very narrow lane by which was the approach to it. Arrived overagainst its center, we saw inscribed in ample characters, on the doorway into a narrow fore-court, Such-a-one, architect.' 'A handsome house the architect has built for himself here,' said my friend, and some considerable expence ' he has been at in this doorway, for the sign of his 'trade.' Presently however we observed another inscription, from which we learnt that my friend was, at least in part, mistaken; for the building before us was the county-jail. Drawing back then a few steps, to get a better general view of it, he burst into a fit of laughter, exclaiming, By my soul, Bullcalf's shoulders upon Shadow's legs!' The building had something imposing in its first appearance, and the wall of the court before it concealed, from my nearer view, the absurdity which had excited my friend's mirth,