LESS PRETENTIOUS MANSIONS 271 



walls here are of brick and the ornament is of stone, but ap- 

 parently either the stone or the money gave out by the time the 

 roof was reached, for the cornice and the pediment are of brick, 

 and it is seen at once how impossible it was to carry out classic 

 detail in the ordinary brick of the district, and with the limited 

 skill of the ordinary workman. Nevertheless the result is attrac- 

 tive, and it prompts the somewhat disconcerting question, whether 

 the fancy is not as much tickled by the efforts of the obscure 

 and half-educated designer, as by the correct and skilful handling 

 of the trained architect ? Accidents of colour and situation, the 

 effects of time and weather, and above all, individuality of treat- 

 ment, are as potent factors in impressing the imagination as book- 

 learning and careful adherence to rules of proportion ; and in 

 admiring the great houses of the eighteenth century, and 

 Campbell, Gibbs, and the hierarchy of architects who produced 

 them, one longs to meet some unexpected difficulty successfully 

 surmounted, some state of things not contemplated in the books, 

 which should prove that the man had an invention, an imagina- 

 tion, one might almost say a soul, of his own. 



The custom of building large houses with detached wings 

 survived well into the middle of the eighteenth century. It will 

 be remembered that Isaac Ware, in his " Complete Body of 

 Architecture" (1756), gives elaborate rules for the proportions 

 and disposition of such edifices ; Holkham Hall, in Norfolk, 

 designed by Kent about 1734, and Kedleston Hall, in Derby- 

 shire, designed by James Paine in 1761, are two notable 

 examples still in existence. 



Holkham is the most important piece of domestic work of 

 the fashionable architect, William Kent, who was the favourite 

 protege of Lord Burlington. Like most of his contemporaries, 

 Kent passed several years in Italy before doing any work in 

 England. He was of lowly origin, as were many architects of 

 the time. As a start in life he was apprenticed to a coach- 

 painter ; Ripley walked to London at the onset of his career, 

 and obtained work with a journeyman carpenter ; Carr, of 

 York, began as a working mason ; all three were Yorkshire 

 men. Kent early impressed men of position with his un- 

 usual capacity, and it was through their kindness that he was 

 enabled to study in Italy, where he appears to have lived from 

 1710 to 1719. At this time he was studying painting, a pursuit 



