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part, of wooden framed houses, the wealthy commercial communities 

 of Italy were adorning their streets and canals with some of the finest 

 specimens of general town architecture which have ever existed; and 

 in Rome and Florence the palaces of the great families of the period 

 carried the style to the highest pitch of grandeur, as exemplified in the 

 building generally admitted as best typifying its finest cliaracteristics — 

 the Famese palace. The successful adaptation of this style to modem 

 uses, especially on the great scale adopted in the club-houses of London, 

 and lately in the town mansion of one of our own nobility, conveys the 

 best idea I can afford of the perfect adaptation of an exotic style. I will 

 exemplify this further, by such illustrations as I have been able to bring 

 together, three of which are from our own locality. The buildings erected 

 for the purpose of offices in Brunswick-street, afford a good instance 

 among others here of the successful use of a purely Italian style for 

 general purposes; ajid a beautiful house front from Hull, of refined 

 Venetian character, is, I think, the very best example I have seen in 

 England of adapting a rather inti*actable style to a very confined and 

 difficult site ; the architect is Mr. Brodrick, of Hull, to whose kind- 

 ness I am indebted for the use of his design, A villa, at New 

 Brighton, by the same architect as Brunswick-buildings, Mr. G. 

 Williams, is another very happy instance of successful adaptation ; and, 

 in situations unlike those wooded seclusions in which our forefathers 

 delighted, and with which the use of gothic architecture for domestic 

 purposes is principally associated, this Italian character of house, much 

 like many scattered through the valley of the Arno, is admirably suited, 

 both as regards pleasing effect and fitness, to modem comfort. 



As regards choice of material, influencing as it must the general 

 character of a building, both in its masses and its decoration, there are 

 plain considerations which should not be lost sight of either by architect 

 or critic. In almost every position those materials are most suitable 

 which are indigenous, as best suiting its climate and harmonising best 

 with its natural features. The neglect of this point has defaced many 

 a charming scene by exotic and inharmonious architecture; striking 

 examples of which are exhibited in our own lake district, in which, in 

 many instances, a suburban villa of most cockney spruceness, may be 

 seen intruding its plastered face, where an honest, mgged, thick-walled 

 rubble front of native undisguised stone, would have rather added to 

 than detracted from the character of the natural scenery. This was 

 strongly insisted on by the poet Wordsworth, and where his advice has 

 been followed, the gain to the beauty of the country and the relief to the 

 lover of the picturesque is indescribable. Material, again, should be 

 tme and real, a point also pressed again and agaui on unheeding ears ; 



