446 Notes on Gardens and Country Seats : — 



wait to remove the summer-house, to make a proper foundation 

 for the tower, but carried it up on the walls already standing. 

 The kinds of masonry, brickwork, and carpentry which were 

 used may easily be ascertained from the parts remaining. 

 Nothing can be worse : the walls are carried up in some parts 

 of brick, in others of stone, and in others of studwork, some- 

 times enclosed in stone or brick casing, but always of the 

 very worst description of workmanship. The mortar seems to 

 have been particularly bad, and never to have united either with 

 the stone or with the brick ; since, even in the most solid parts 

 of the wall which remain, it may be picked out with the fingers 

 in a state of powder. The appearance of the ruins, as they now 

 stand, produces an impression of meanness mixed with grandeur 

 that it is impossible to describe. The greatness of the dimen- 

 sions of the parts which still exist, and which, from being 

 covered with cement, have the appearance of stone ; and the 

 shattered remains of lath and plaster, studwork, and bricks, 

 and bond timber; and, above all, the long strings of tarred 

 pack-thread hanging from the nails and other remains of what 

 were once mouldings worked in Roman cement, have a tattered 

 apearance, the very opposite of the grandeur produced by 

 durability of execution. We feel as if we had discovered that 

 what, at a distance, we had supposed to be a marble statue, was, 

 in reality, a mere bundle of rags and straw, whited over to 

 produce effect. To those who are acquainted with the details 

 of building, and especially with the practices of the worst Lon- 

 don builders, the exhibition here is most amusing in a scientific 

 point of view ; and one may easily conceive that the work has 

 been chiefly carried on by men in a state of intoxication. The 

 manner in which the tower fell may be mentioned as something 

 remarkable. It had given indications of falling for some 

 time, and the more valuable parts of the windows and other 

 articles had been removed. Mr. Farquhar, however, who then 

 resided in one angle of the building, and who was in a very 

 infirm state of health, could not be brought to believe that there 

 was any danger. He was wheeled out in his chair on the lawn 

 in front, about half an hour before it fell ; and though he saw the 

 cracks, and the deviation of the central tower from the per- 

 pendicular, he treated the idea of its coming down as ridiculous. 

 He was carried back to his room, however, and the tower fell 

 almost immediately. From the manner in which it fell, from 

 the lightness of the materials of which it was constructed, and 

 partly also from a number of workmen having been for some 

 days making a noise in taking down articles, which it was sup- 

 posed by Mr. Farquhar's nephew the tower would injure if it fell, 

 neither Mr. Farquhar nor the servants, who were in the kitchen 

 preparing dinner, knew that it had fallen ; though the immense 



