l VSTIJ HuWXKD. 



The third Karl, vigorously prompted In 

 Vanbrugh, would have none of the villigc church 

 vaults as a burving-place, and in l~i" Wren's most 

 ieiebrated pupil, Nicholas Hawksmonr, the arJ: 



<r" >:. ( icorge's, Bloorrabury, began this temple t 

 the dead, which was not finished until the founder 

 had lain in it for four years. It was, perhaps, the 

 first adventure of" such a building in Kngland, and 

 bishops looked askance at it as a pagan departure 

 from Knglish custom. It was planned before the 

 great Duke of Mariborough died, and Vanbrugh, the 



Karl's lonstant news writer from London, writes 

 loiuerning the projected funeral of the Duke, that he 

 has taken the liberty to mention to Lord dodolphin 

 what the Karl designs at Castle Howard, " what IMS 

 been practised by the most polite people before 

 priestcraft got poor carcases into their keeping to 

 make a little money of." But it was hardly likely 

 that Duchess Sarah, at law ami loggerheads with Sir 

 John, would heed his advice, and a vast sum was 

 spent upon the pageant of a funeral. " An idle show 

 gone in half-an-hour," writes Sir John, " and forgot 

 in two days. What a noble monument would that 

 have made ! " So I x>rd Carlisle had his mausoleum 

 and the Duke of Mariborough had none, although 

 he is commemorated at Castle Howard by an obelisk 

 which hails him as "defender of his country and of 

 Kurope." 



These great buildings in the classical m .inner, 

 the pride of their founders, are seldom seen complete 

 by those who set about them. The Karl himself 

 dwelt a while in his great house, and was buried in 

 his unfinished tomb ; but Sir John Vanbrugh died in 

 1726 in his house at Whitehall, the house whose 

 shabby end we saw of late years when the old United 

 Service Institution was pulled down. I ie never saw 

 Castle Howard with the scaffolding down, and when 

 he had taken his wife to see the palace he had 

 finished at Blenheim they were turned out of the 

 grounds by old Sarah's servants. To the house of 

 Carlisle he had long been a friend and correspondent. 



I 1 I idolised little son was godson of the Karl, to 

 whom the father writes that a new architect is 

 mming, for the little one already knows arches and 

 pillars in his lx>x of braks. But the child was to 

 begin life like his father as a soldier, and never lived 

 to run from that through his father's many trades. 

 When Sir Charles I l\\ard, the Earl's youngeM son, 

 \s.is wounded at l-onfenoy, a bullet ended Charles 

 Vanbrugh's soldiering. 



He-fore Castle Howard and Blenheim vast houses 

 had risen in Knglaiul, but few remain of these. The 

 rich lawyers under the Tudors and the early Stuarts, 

 the men who were at their law lw>oks 1>\ ian. lie-light 

 in the early mornini;, who pursued the law in the 

 courts the whole day long until the last fee had IHTCII 

 pouched, loved building, ami made their houses too 

 wide for descendants whose otrkc wav spending what 

 toilsome chicanery had earned. The maintenance of 

 that noble house of Audley Knd proved a charge too 

 much for a private family. Holdenby House is but 

 a gateway and a ruin With a lesser house nesting 

 within its boundaries ; Kirby, the wreck of an 

 uncompleted marvel. I low soon an Knglish palace 

 may vanish away may be seen in the history of that 

 mushroom wonder at Fonthill (iiffard. Our rough 

 northern weather hurries the work of Time, and 

 huge palaces in Kngland cry like the horse leech's 

 daughters for repairs ami iostly upkeep. They ask 

 for .1 stable prosperity in the owners, who must abide 

 by them, caring for them as though their bl<x>d were 

 in the mortar. 



In Castle Howard we have a better example 

 than we shall get elsewhere of that style for which 

 the rich Knglish lords of the eighteenth century 

 flung away all our national traditions of house- 

 building. It is a stately and a monumental style, 

 and Castle Howard may remain for ages among the 

 great palaces of the world. Nevertheless, its cold 

 splendour makes us glad that the exceeding costli- 

 ness of such work kept its cupolas and porticoes 

 from nesting in all of our old Knglish parks. 



