§114. 



COLUMNS. 35 1 



buildings, where the Gothic style is employed, that breadth of 

 treatment for which it is remarkable, in preference to the 

 overloaded fretwork of our Tudor style, which invites the soot 

 to corrode and deface it. 



[It may also be hoped that our builders will cease to copy, 

 one after the other, the unfluted, rusticated, and other un- 

 finished columns, often with projecting square blocks for the 

 alternate drums *, used in many modern edifices, which offend 

 against all notions of good architecture, reason, and beauty. 



1 14. These and similar errors, however, are not confined to 

 England ; they were owing to a debased Eoman style having 

 been studied, and followed at the period of the Renaissance f , 

 and are therefore common to all who imitated it ; but now 

 that the principles and beauty of Greek taste are no longer 

 unknown, they cease to be excusable.] 



The square and round nodules on shafts, sometimes re- 

 sembling " fleeces wrapped about them, as at the entrance of 

 Burlington House," have been very properly denounced by Mr. 

 Kuskin (" Stones of Venice," i. p. 294), as well as the rusticated 

 work on the basement stories of some of our houses, in which 

 he says, "our architects appear to have taken the decayed 

 teeth of elephants for their type," and " which, for the most 

 part, resemble nothing so much as worm-casts." He also 

 very properly condemns the custom of purposely making 

 the divisions of stones appear stronger, by chiselling their 

 edges (p. 287) ; and still more the paltry imitation of squared 

 stone in stucco, with the pretended divisions marked, or 

 painted, on it. A house built with squared stones, all of the 

 same size, so that each set of vertical divisions may correspond 

 exactly with the alternate one above and below it, looks 

 very monotonous ; unless relieved by a proper richness of 



* These square projections will not find any excuse from being met with in 

 buildings by Palladio, as in the Palazzo Tieni at Vicenza, and elsewhere. 



f Or Cinque-cento style, distinct from what should be called the Revival in 

 Italy, which belongs to an earlier period. 



