210 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



Tlie style of architecture, which we call cathedral or mo- 

 nastic gothic, is manifestly a corruption of the sacred archi- 

 tecture of the Greeks and Romans, by a mixture of the 

 Moorish or Saracenic, which is formed out of a combination 

 of the Egyptian, Persian and Hindoo. It may easily be 

 traced through all its variations, from the church of Santa 

 Sophia, at Constantinople, and the Cathedral of Montreale, 

 near Palermo, the one of the sixth, the other of the eighth 

 century, down to King's Chapel, at Cambridge, (Eng.,) the 

 last and most perfect of this kind of buildings. The orna- 

 ments of this monastic gothic consist of indiscriminate imi- 

 tations of almost every kind of plant and animal scattered 

 with licentious profusion, and without any preestablished 

 rule or general principle ; but often with just taste and feeling 

 as to the effect to be produced." The system of regularity 

 of which the moderns have been so tenacious in the plans of 

 their country-houses, was taken from the sacred and not from 

 the domestic architecture of the ancients.^^ 



Such were the Greek temples: and these regular structures, 

 being the only monuments of ancient taste and magnificence 

 in architecture that remained, at the resurrection of the arts, 

 in a state sufficiently entire to be perfectly understood, the 

 revivers of the Grecian style copied it servilely from them, 

 and applied it indiscriminately to country as well as to town 

 houses. But as they felt its incongruity with surrounding 

 scenery of unimproved and unperverted nature, they endeav- 

 ored to make that conform to it, as far as it was within their 

 reach, or under their control. Hence probably arose the 

 Italian style of gardening ; though other causes may have 

 cooperated. Since the introduction of the modern style of 

 gardening, called at first the Oriental style, and afterwards 

 landscape gardening, probably (adds the author) from its effi- 

 cacy in destroying all picturesque composition, Grecian tem- 

 ples have been employed as decorations by almost all persons 

 who could afford to indulge their taste in objects so costly ; 

 but, though executed in many instances on a scale and man- 

 ner suitable to the design, disappointment has almost invari- 

 ably followed. In the rich lawns and shrubberies of Eng- 



