172 CLIEFDEX HOUSE, BUCKS. 



the school of Raphael. Out of this on the right hand we go 

 into a parlour 33 feet by 39 feet, with a niche 15 feet broad 

 for a Bufette, paved with white marble, and placed within an 

 arch, with Pilasters of divers colours, the upper part of which as 

 high as the ceiling is painted by Ricci." The roof of the house 

 was flat and gave opportunity for obtaining a fine prospect : 

 on the parapet fronting the park were four statues of Mercury 

 Secrecy, Equity, and Liberty, and fronting the garden were the 

 four Seasons. This particular enumeration gives a touch of life 

 and reality to the endless figures which break the sky-line of 

 Campbell's elevations, and of John Webb's before him. The 

 view reproduced in Fig. II3A shows the house as it appeared 

 in 1790, when it was about a hundred years old. It not only 

 suggests the rural surroundings, but gives a lively idea of the 

 groups which frequented the Mall, down the length of which 

 this front faced. The Mall, it will be remembered, was the 

 principal walk in the royal park of St James, and apparently 

 enjoyed the formality of being guarded by sentries. 



Cliefden House, in Buckinghamshire, was another of these 

 noblemen's " palaces," with " arching galleries " joining the 

 offices to the 'house. It stood upon an enormous terrace 

 described by Campbell as 433 ft. long and 24 ft. high, the front 

 of which consisted of a series of alcoves or niches, flanked at 

 either end by a flight of steps (Fig. 1 14). The original house has 

 entirely disappeared, and has been replaced by one of excellent 

 design by Charles Barry. Merely the terrace, somewhat altered, 

 and the dwarf walls of the lay out remain, and Wynne's work can 

 only be judged from Campbell's elevations and from old prints. 



The consideration of these two houses brings vividly before 

 the mind the completeness of the change that had come over 

 domestic architecture during the course of the seventeenth 

 century. The description of Buckingham House from contem- 

 porary pens (one of them that of the owner himself) gives an air 

 of vraiseinblance to Campbell's cold illustrations. The "arching 

 galleries " indicate a disposition of plan which was being adopted 

 in many large houses, and was for another half century employed 

 in order to impart stateliness to what otherwise might have 

 been a rather bald design. 



The idea of this arrangement was to have a central block 

 containing the principal rooms, and to flank it at some distance 

 on each side by a subsidiary block connected to the main 

 structure by curved colonnades the "arching galleries" of 



