152 



He then observed that the introduction of Italian architec- 

 ture into England gave a fresh impulse to our ideas of the 

 picturesque, and produced in domestic buildings effects unseen 

 before, by the mingling of the foreign and native styles ; and 

 after entering into the causes of this mingling, said : — " For 

 some time it was a mere parody on the classic style. Novelty and 

 error went hand in hand ; but something abstractedly valuable 

 to art was gained — the study of picturesque beauty, in con- 

 nexion with the antique orders, was advanced, the wholesome 

 effects of which were visible in the architecture of Sir John 

 Vanbrugh and others, who endeavoured to call back to the 

 architecture of Palladio something of the spirit of the departed 

 Gothic." 



He regretted, as unfortunate for the art, the persecution 

 such endeavours were met by; and admitting numberless 

 whimsicalities and absurdities to have been perpetrated in the 

 name of the picturesque, he maintained that the latter is not, as 

 has been supposed, inimical to purity of style, and that it can 

 be obtained in the antique, without violating its essential laws. 



After recommending several of the old towns of the Conti- 

 nent, and some nearer home, as calculated to suggest ideas of 

 the picturesque, and eulogizing the streets of London, of the 

 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as having been instinct 

 with beauty, and suggestive of the causes and conditions on 

 which it depends, he dwelt upon the effects of time and 

 weather in aiding pictorial beauty: "Buildings," he re- 

 marked, "grow into harmony with nature by the effect of 

 climate ; they become adopted, as it were, by the genius loci, 

 and are united together by the constant influence upon them 

 of the same causes." 



After other remarks of a similar nature, and a glance at the 

 Mahomedan cities, in reference to their pictorial qualities, he 

 mentioned sculpture as ranking high among the elements of 

 the picturesque in architecture. " Sculpture," lie said, " has 

 been aptly called the voice of architecture ; without it the art 



