DOORWAYS AND PORCHES 339 



times men of influence did many things which nobody was 

 bold enough to stop ; and while heartily agreeing that private 

 interests must be subordinated to public, we may, perhaps, 

 indulge, in feelings of secret gratification that among our 

 ancestors individuality had more play than is possible in these 

 well ordered times. Another picturesque but, strictly speaking, 

 intolerable effort at design is to be seen at The Martins, 

 Chipping Campden (Fig. 261). The great truncated corner 

 pilaster, the porch with its cornice running into the window, 

 can be defended on no grounds save that there they are. But 

 so imperfect is our nature that this bit of haphazard com- 

 position gives more pleasure than many a more correct attempt 

 at design ; a pleasure allied, perhaps, to that cynical satisfaction 

 we experience in watching shortcomings in our friends from 

 which we ourselves are free. 



The ironwork of the early eighteenth century is one of its 

 most remarkable productions. In England ironwork design 

 seems to have burst suddenly into full splendour, without any 

 gradual preparation. There are no elaborate specimens to be 

 found throughout the seventeenth century until its close, nor 

 are there any drawings by Thorpe, Smithson, Jones, or Webb, 

 which lead one to suppose that they treated ironwork in any 

 but the simplest way. But with the advent in 1689 of Jean 

 Tijou, a native of France, who was probably brought over from 

 the Netherlands by Queen Mary, consort of William III., the 

 whole aspect was changed, and a school of clever blacksmiths 

 grew up who filled the country, and more especially London 

 and its suburbs, with beautiful bits of design in gates, fences, 

 sign-boards, mace-holders in churches, balustrades of staircases, 

 screens, and other objects where iron could be employed. 

 Their work is marked by great judgment in varying the sizes 

 of the iron bars and scrolls, by the variety and elaboration of 

 the design, and by the judicious introduction of thin sheet iron, 

 hammered and modelled into foliage or some heraldic device. 

 The craftsmen seem to have known exactly how to handle their 

 material so as to combine strength with lightness, vigour with 

 delicacy, the open effect of scroll-work with the solid effect of 

 foliage. The due mixture of the curved line with the straight, 

 the growth of one from the other, , the repetition of straight 

 lines in suitable positions, all seem to have come to them by 

 intuition which seldom erred. Of the immense amount of work 



