80 John of Padua. 
as principal freemason.” He was at once engaged by Sir John 
Thynne. It is impossible to say how far Robert Smithson merely 
executed work according to plans already provided for him: or how 
far he may have assisted in arranging and finally settling the plans: 
but it is remarkable that he was the man who built Wollaton 
House, in Nottinghamshire, and on his monument in the parish 
Church there, where he was buried, it is recorded that he was “ the 
Architector and Surveyor unto the most worthy House of Wollaton 
with divers others of great account.” 
The late Mr. John Britton considered the two houses so re- 
markably alike that, in his opinion, they must have been the pro- 
duction of one and the same mind, Another writer ' sees so many 
minute differences in details, that he is of a contrary opinion. So, 
in architecture, as in medicine, doctors differ. It is true that Wolla- 
ton, having been built a few years later than the other, has more 
ornament ; still, the general observer cannot help being struck with 
a very strong resemblance between them: and would probably 
conclude that they were really the work of one and the same 
architect, who, naturally, would not make them precisely the same, 
but would give them the sisterly likeness which Ovid gives to 
his sea-nymphs,“ not exactly the same features, yet not very 
different ” :— 
‘* facies non omnibns una 
Nec diversa tamen; qualem decet esse sororum.” 
(Metam., II., 1. 13.) 
The word “ Architector,” used on the monument to Robert 
Smithson, may mean, not the modern architect, but merely the 
builder. R. Smithson certainly was not employed upon the first 
Longleat, so that if that first house was (as by the notice of “ friezes, 
architraves, capitals, bases, &c,” it appears to have been), of the 
same Italian-English or English-Italian style as the present one, 
Smithson could not have been the original designer. That person 
must have been, as already suggested, either an Italian, or an 
Englishman educated in Italy, whose object was to combine both 
1 See “‘ The Builder,” 13th May, 1882. 
