2IO The Art of Landscape Gardening 



wrong or misunderstood in the manner of adapting 

 Grecian architecture to our large mansions in the 

 country: our professors, having studied from models 

 in a different climate, often forget the difference of 

 circumstances and shew their classic taste, like those 

 who correctly quote the words, but misapply the sense 

 of an author. The most striking feature of Grecian 

 architecture is a portico, and this, when it forms part 

 of a temple or a church, may be applied with pro- 

 priety and grandeur ; but when added to a large house 

 and intersected by two or three rows of windows, it is 

 evidently what, in French, is called an applique, some- 

 thing added, an afterthought ; and it has but too often 

 the appearance of a Grecian temple affixed to an English 

 cotton-mill. 



There is also another circumstance belonging to 

 Grecian architecture, viz. symmetry, or an exact corre- 

 spondence of the sides with each other. Symmetry 

 appears to constitute a part of that love of order so 

 natural to man ; the first idea of a child, in drawing 

 a house, is to make the windows correspond, and 

 perhaps to add two correspondent wings. 



There are, however, some situations where great 

 magnificence and convenience are the result of a 

 building of this description; yet it can only be the 

 case where the house is so large that one of the wings 

 may contain a complete suite of private apartments, 

 connected with the house by a gallery or library, while 

 the other may consist of a conservatory, etc. 



Every one who has observed the symmetrical ele- 

 vations scattered round the metropolis, and the small 

 houses with wings in the neighbourhood of manufac- 

 turing towns, will allow that symmetry so applied is 

 apt to degenerate into spruceness ; and of the in- 



