RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 347 



style, for country residences of a superior class.* The 

 materials generally employed in their construction in 

 England, are stone and brick ; and of late years, brick 

 and stucco has come into very general use. 



The Elizabethan Style, that mode of building so com- 

 mon in England in the 17th century, a mixture oi 

 Gothic and Grecian in its details is usually considered as 

 a barbarous kind of architecture, wanting in purity of 

 taste. Be this as it may, it cannot be denied that in the 

 finer specimens of this style, there is a surprising degree 

 of richness and picturesqueness for which we may look in 

 vain elsewhere. In short it seems, in the best examples, 

 admirably fitted for a bowery, thickly foliaged country, 

 like England, and for the great variety of domestic 

 enjoyments of its inhabitants. In the most florid examples 

 of this style, of which many specimens yet remain, we 

 often meet with every kind of architectural feature and 

 ornament, oddly, and often grotesquely combined pointed 

 gables, dormer-windows, steep and low roofs, twisted 

 columns, pierced parapets, and broad windows with small 

 lights. Sometimes the effect of this fantastic combination 

 is excellent, but often bad. The florid Elizabethan style 

 is, therefore, a very dangerous one in the hands of any 

 one but an architect of profound taste ; but we think in 

 some of its simpler forms (Fig. 52), it may be adopted for 

 country residences here in picturesque situations with a 

 quaint and happy effect. f 



* The residence of Samuel E. Lyon, Esq., at White Plains, N. Y., Fig. 51, 

 is ;i very pleasing example oi' the Tudor Cottage. 



The seat of Robert Gilmor, Esq., near Baltimore, in the Tudor style, is a 

 very extensive pile of building. 



t A highly unique residence in the old English syle, is Pelham Priory, the 

 seat of the Rev. Robert Bolton, near New Rochelle, N. Y., Fig. 53. The 



