72 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



pilasters of stone. This style was a sort of degraded Italian, 

 ugly enough, but at least possessing the advantage of throwing 

 all parts of the building equally open to the influences of the 

 air and sky. A greater contrast cannot well be found than 

 that between the fanci- 

 ful timber fronts of the 

 gabled houses of former 

 years, and those flat, 

 imadorned habitations 

 which arose to super- 

 sede them in the reigns 

 of Queen Anne and the 

 Georges, continuing 

 common down to the 

 present day. 



A marked change, 

 however, has, in the 

 Victorian era, taken 

 place in the domestic 

 architecture of the 

 country. The unifor- 

 mity in which the gene- 

 rations immediately pre- 

 ceding seem to have 

 delighted has been su- 

 perseded by a ten- 

 dency in the opposite 

 direction, every man 

 building in his own 

 fashion, sometimes with 

 a due regard to style, 

 but at others setting all 



styles at utter defiance. 



Hence, in the case of 



town architecture, there may occasionally be seen in our chief 



cities a row of buildings, well and expensively constructed, but 



no two of which are alike in any essential feature. 



In the case of suburban and country residences, the taste for 

 variety and inde- 

 pendence is still 

 more frequently dis- 

 played. A class of 

 building known as 

 the villa has be- 

 come common in 

 recent years, sup- 

 plying a want which 

 is in itself singu- 

 larly characteristic 

 of our time. Our 

 forefathers who 

 were engaged in 

 trade or in the pro- 

 fessions for the most 

 part inhabited, with 

 their families, the 

 houses in which their 

 business was pur- 

 sued. The rapid 

 growth of commerce 

 has in many cases 

 rendered it neces- 

 sary that the space 

 formerly occupied 

 by private lodgings 

 should be given up 

 to business pur- 

 poses; and the simul- 

 taneous increase of 

 wealth has enabled 

 well-to-do citizens 

 and professional 



men to consult their own health and tastes by residence at a dis- 

 tance from the scene of their daily toil. Hence, in many parts of 

 the country there have sprung up clusters of residences inhabited 

 by a class who occupy a position midway between that of the 

 townsman and the country squire of former times. The resi- 

 dences themselves are a medium between the town house and 



FARHHOUSE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, NEAR LEICESTER. 



VILLA RESIDENCE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLASSICAL OR ROMAN STYLE. 



the old country mansion ; and to this class of house the old 

 Eoman name for a country house villa is applied by common 

 usage. 



These villa residences are for the most part detached, or 



standing each in its 

 own grounds of greater 

 or less extent ; and 

 thus they afford wide 

 scope for the practice 

 either of architectural 

 science or caprice. 

 We consequently see 

 infinite diversity in 

 their construction, and 

 to classify them all 

 under any recognised 

 designations would be 

 a matter of impossibi- 

 lity. But, so far as they 

 are worth attention at 

 all from an architectu- 

 ral point of view, they 

 may mostly be grouped 

 into two classes 

 those in which the de- 

 sign has more or less- 

 of the classical ele- 

 ment, and those in 

 which the Gothic pre- 

 vails in a correspond- 

 ing degree. 



To afford the stu- 

 dent a clue to guide 

 him in his observations,, 

 we set before him an example of each of these grand divisions 

 of style, as adapted to the domestic architecture of the middle 

 classes. The classical element is displayed in the purely Eoman- 

 style of the small villa in our second illustration. The Gothic 



is illustrated in the- 



H=^ example of a small 



country house con- 

 structed after what 

 we have previously 

 described as the- 

 "Elizabethan" man- 

 ner. As a supple- 

 mentary illustra- 

 tion, we give an en- 

 graving of a highly 

 popular kind of cot- 

 tage or villa archi- 

 tecture, which, al- 

 though not strictly 

 in accordance with 

 any recognised 

 style, has so much 

 about it that is 

 attractive and me- 

 ritorious as to con- 

 stitute a type of 

 its own, to which 

 the name of " cot- 

 tage" is commonly 

 applied. So far as 

 this can be iden- 

 tified with either 

 of the other styles r 

 it must be con- 

 sidered an adapta- 

 tion of the classical, 

 as shown in the 

 modern Italian ; but 



the gabled roof is a feature which connects it to a certain de- 

 gree with the old English houses of the past, and still more 

 nearly with the Swiss cottages of the present day. 



In this manner the styles of architecture are frequently run 

 one into the other in modern villa and other residences, some- 

 times, as in this case, to produce an attractive and harmonious 



