STRAWBERRY HILL— A L,ESSON IN TASTE. 



STRAWBERRY HILL— A LESSON IN TASTE. 



[ SEE FRONTISPIECE. ] 



One of the most celebrated men of the last century, as every one familiar vrith English 

 literature knows, was Horace Walfole. His literary talent, his love of art, his anti- 

 quarian taste, and his social position, all combined to make him one of the celebrities of 

 his age. All reviewers admit that his letters convey the best interior picture of his time, 

 that we possess, and they have a charm of style, and a flow of anecdote and wit, that 

 have made them the most popular books of their kind for nearly a century. 



When Walpole was in his prime, he retired to Twickenham, on the Thames, one 

 of the suburbs of London. Here he purchased a property, and amused himself for twen- 

 ty years in building a villa, which he called Strawberry Hill, and collecting a museum of 

 antiquarian relics, and curiosities of all kinds. In this residence and its contents he spent 

 vast sums of money, and exhausted all his taste and ingenuity in producing something 

 unique and admirable. Having already ransacked Italy as a virtuosa, before commencing 

 his building he made a tour through various parts of the kingdom, and collected models 

 of the principal cathedrals and fine old gothic buildings. England had been saturated for 

 two generations previous to his time, with so-called classical architecture, and Walpole, 

 with his antiquarian taste, set about a revival of the taste for the ancient style. 



The result in Strawberry Hill, is both amusing and instructive. It is amusing, since the 

 house was at last only a caricature of gothic style — a kind of bastard imitation, or rather 

 jumble of various eras of gothic architecture, without unity, harmony, or correctness of 

 detail or proportion. Square headed labels are hung over pointed windows, pinnacles 

 spring out of embattled parapets — and every species of absurdity of which the style is 

 capable, seem to be assembled to keep each other company. 



Strawberry Hill is instructive, because it shows very clearly that a man may have a 

 great deal of knowledge, and abundant taste of a certain kind, and yet make an utter fail- 

 ure in attempting to become his own architect. If a man Avishes to build a plain house — 

 which shall express only a comfortable and convenient family residence, he may succeed 

 well enough without any professional aid. But it is easier to compose a fine piece of music 

 without having studied harmony and thorough basso, than it is to compose a large build- 

 ing, in a complicated style of architecture, without knowing a great deal more of the art than 

 what is comprised in a mere love of the subject, and a smattering of knowledge of the de- 

 tails and plans of other buildings. 



Strawberry Hill has been looked upon with favor by some critics, not as possessing in- 

 trinsic beauty, but as having drawn attention to the merits of the Gothic style, which had 

 long been neglected in England. A writer in the London Quarterly, claims even more for 

 Walpole. "He will probably be for ages remembered as the creator of a new style of 

 architecture. Great discoveries are sometimes made from small circumstances, and the re- 

 pairs and additions made to what was originall}' a little citizen's box at the corner of two 

 high roads, revealed to Walpole the great secret of the combined beauty, convenience and 

 grandeur, which a revival of our old English architecture was capable of producing. He 

 honestly confesses that when he began to gothicise Strawberry Hill, he knew little about 

 the principles of the style he adopted — all his earlier, and some of his later details, were 

 poor, erroneous and inconsistent, and the whole, even after the author had finished it to 

 his own mind, has been censured as a heap of littlenesses and incongruities. The descrip 

 tion is just, but the censure is not so." 



