334" Notes on Country Seats mid Gardens. 



The building is, however, closely watched by Mr. Gregory 

 himself, who keeps himself informed of every part of the con- 

 struction ; and who, from entering so completely into both the 

 design and the practical details of execution, may be said to have 

 embodied himself in the edifice, and to live in every feature of 

 it, as a planter may be said to live in every tree that he has 

 planted, and a florist in every flower that he has raised. Mr. 

 Lamb, who accompanied us to Harlaxton, was more struck 

 with this building than he ever was with any other of the kind. 

 He is a great admirer of the style of James I., and he declares 

 Harlaxton new Manor-House to be more original and more 

 completely worked out than any specimen of that style he had 

 before seen. 



When this house is completed, the interior arrangements will 

 be found not less admirable than the exterior elevations. In the 

 principal floor there is no space lost in passages, and no part 

 that is not thoroughly lighted, and a great deal of handsome 

 interior scenic effect produced. The drainage; provision for the 

 supply of hot and cold water, of hot air, and of hot-water pipes 

 for heating the conservatories ; the arrangements for supplying 

 coals to different floors, for disposing of the bell-wires so as they 

 may be easily repaired, for conveying all the offensive parts of 

 the service of the bed-room floors to an appropriate room in the 

 ground floor without passing through the parallel floors ; and 

 various other details of this kind, have been all kept in view 

 and studied when forming the design, and all carefully attended 

 to in the execution. 



It may be worth while to notice the mode in which the coals 

 are supplied to, and cinders removed from, the different rooms ; 

 because, though it cannot be copied, except in similar situa- 

 tions, it may be imitated in the case of many large mansions by 

 inclined planes carried up in towers.* The house at Harlaxton 



* A great defect in the groups of buildings composing the dwelling-house 

 and domestic offices in the country residences of Britain is, the want of 

 symmetry, either regular or irregular. Regular symmetry, whether bilateral, 

 quadrilateral, or polygonal, can only be given when the house is building ; 

 but the effect of irregular symmetry, or picturesque symmetry, as it may be 

 called, can be given to any group of buildings, however scattered, by the ad- 

 dition of a tower which shall rise more or less above the highest part of the 

 general masses. The good effect of such a tower, rising from a straggling 

 group of buildings, is felt by every one who has the slightest taste for 

 landscape composition ; and to understand why it has this good effect, it is 

 only necessary to reflect on what symmetry is, and what are its effects. 

 Every symmetrical object consists of a centre, or axis, and of sides, and the 

 use of the one side being the repetition of the other is merely to assist the 

 eye in recognising the composition as a whole, which in regular symmetry it 

 very readily does. When the one side is not a repetition of the other, a 

 whole can only be recognised in the composition by the discovery of the 

 centre, or axis ; which being done, the spectator imagines the sides to be 



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