Twenty-five years after his restoration Charles II. died; James II. passed uneasily across the scene to his inglorious exit, and William and Mary succeeded him on the throne. But it is not to the sovereigns that we must look as pioneers in house building, although at Greenwich and Hampton Court fine work was accomplished. It is rather to the great nobles, or at least to aristocratic and wealthy families, that we owe the most notable specimens of domestic architecture of the time. At this period the gulf between the upper and lower classes was wide and deep: its widening was perhaps one of the reactions from the conditions of the Commonwealth when many persons of humble origin fought their way to eminence. The distance between the heads of a great household and their retainers had been increasing all through the century; the increase has already been indicated in the type of plan adopted by Jones and Webb. The great hall, where the whole family used to meet on common ground and with common objects, had disappeared. The great noble of Elizabeth’s time lived among his retainers; the grandee under William and Mary relegated his servants to a distant part of the building or to the basement. The great ones of the land now housed themselves in splendid buildings, and surrounded themselves with splendid gardens. Nobody grumbled; the whole community concurred in this exaltation of birth combined with wealth. Men whose names to us are household words sought the patronage of others whose names and doings are hardly recorded outside the pages of the “Complete Peerage.” Manners, customs, dress emphasised this condition at the time; architecture reflects it to-day.

Boughton House, near Kettering in Northamptonshire, is a good example of a home of one of the great nobles of the time of William and Mary. Ralph Montagu (afterwards Duke of Montagu) succeeded his father as Lord Montagu of Boughton in 1681. In 1669 he had been appointed ambassador extraordinary to France, and during his stay in that country he lived for a considerable period at Versailles. One of his biographers[60] says that “here it was his Grace formed his idea of building and gardening, erecting his seat at Boughton, in Northamptonshire, after the pattern, and as his Dimensions would allow, after the very model of Versailles.” In 1695 he entertained King William and Queen Mary at Boughton for fifteen days. He had been created Earl of Montagu by William in 1689, and in 1705 he was created Duke of Montagu by Queen Anne. He was, therefore, a great personage, and he made his house and its surroundings of a magnificence suitable to his dignity.

An ancestor had already, in the middle of the sixteenth century, built a fine house at Boughton, with a great hall covered by a roof of unusual beauty and excellence, and with wings and adjuncts of considerable extent. Ralph, Lord Montagu, proceeded to overlay this old house with his new work so completely (see plan, Fig. 132) that it is only here and there, on the removal of panelling, or in the course of some minor alteration such as must from time to time occur in these old houses, that traces of the original building can be found. Fortunately the roof of the hall was preserved, but it was hidden, and remains hidden, by a new plaster ceiling on which Cheron painted a large and elaborate composition. The old house was taken as the nucleus of the new, but it was extended in various directions, especially on the north side, where a range of state rooms was erected with two boldly projecting wings (Fig. 133). It is this part of the house which is reminiscent of Versailles, if the lofty windows and Mansard roofs can really be said to remind one of that vast and much more ornate palace. But the style of this particular work bears a certain resemblance to the grand stable buildings at Versailles; it is large in scale, sober and dignified in treatment (Fig. 134). Indeed, it is so severe as to be thought dull by the casual visitor.

This reproach is not brought against the interior. The rooms are large and stately; their walls are panelled with the great, boldly moulded panels of the period (Fig. 135); their ceilings are painted with the gay mythological subjects of Verrio and his school (see Figs. 310, 311); the floors are filled with the tables, chairs, settees, cabinets, and bedsteads of the time. Portraits of the family[61] hang on the panelling, there are mirrors in which their glories were reflected, and knick-knacks which they handled. In other wings are rooms of less stateliness, intended for daily use; in the attics are long rows of still plainer rooms intended for the servants.

At the time it was built the house, no doubt, answered its purpose admirably; but times change and we change with them; and eventually the rooms were found to be cold, draughty, and inconveniently arranged—one leading, as a rule, out of another. There was space enough, but there were none of the comforts of modern life; no baths nor even any supply of water laid on; it all had to be carried long distances. The house became less constantly in use, and to this fact is largely owing the preservation of its ancient character. Nothing brings home to the mind the changes that have taken place in manners and customs during the last two centuries so forcibly as an attempt to live in an old unaltered house, where even the cooking appliances, although on a grand scale, are ill-adapted to modern needs; and it is only by drastic alterations in some of the less notable rooms that Boughton has been fitted for modern occupation.

Ralph was succeeded in 1708 by his son John, the second duke, who carried on such work as his father had left unfinished. He is responsible for several fireplaces, among other things, on which he made a considerable display of heraldry. The difference between the motif of Duke John’s heraldry and that of a hundred years earlier is that in the earlier work the aim was as much decorative as historic, while in the latter it was mainly historic. In James I.’s time the family arms were found to be excellent objects for ornamenting important panels, and if at the same time they ministered to family pride, so much the better. In Duke John’s case the aim of the heraldry is not so much to provide decoration as to set forth the descent of the ducal family and its alliances, especially the last alliance of all, the marriage of the Duke of Montagu with a daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough. It not inaptly illustrates the attitude of mind of the nobles of the time, their assumption of qualities which placed them on a plane above the rest of mankind, where “grandeur hears with a disdainful smile the short and simple annals of the poor.” The rest of mankind, however, concurred in the assumption, especially those who stood in need of patrons, and the literature of the eighteenth century makes it clear that noblemen and persons of quality wielded an influence which made their goodwill worth cultivating.

It was only fitting that such notable personages should be worthily housed, and at Boughton the first two dukes surrounded themselves with suitable magnificence. The splendour was not confined to the house, it pervaded the surroundings as well. The first duke planted a grand double avenue as wide as the whole façade of the house. He laid out the gardens on a large scale with parterres and wildernesses, long canals and jets d’eau (Fig. 136). The water of the canals fell over a cascade of five stages into an ornamental pond. Intricate walks, some curved and some straight, were left among the young trees. Statues gave point to the vistas. The second duke carried on the work both inside and outside the gardens. He planted a network of avenues extending for many miles in all directions; some of them centred on the house, others pointed to neighbouring churches, yet others converged upon an ancient oak marking the spot where, according to tradition, the last wolf in England was killed. They all linked up the ancient woods, remnants of the old forest of Rockingham. Many old plans are preserved at the house showing the growth of the scheme. There is also an ancient plan of St Cloud in France showing the forests and avenues with which it was enclosed, and from the strong likeness between the English maps and the French, it is not difficult to guess whence the duke’s inspiration was derived.

The grandeur of the gardens has long been dismantled; the statues have disappeared, and some may be seen adorning other people’s fields. The parterres are obliterated, and the intricate walks can no longer be traced; indeed time alone would have rendered them an overgrown tangle. But the great avenues still remain, still centre on the house, still point to the churches, still converge on the ancient oak, still link up the ancient woods. The canals are there, and would yet fall over the cascade were the floodgates lowered. Many of the little trees which formed curious patterns on the plans have grown into giants. Here and there a path survives, following part of its allotted route, enough to show that the original design was not merely a visionary scheme but was actually carried out.

Dyrham, in Gloucestershire, is another but somewhat smaller house of this period; it was built in 1698 from the designs of “the ingenious Mr. Talman,” as Campbell calls him, for William Blaythwayt, who was Secretary of State to William III. The property had come to him some thirty years before by a marriage with the heiress of the Wynters, whose ancient house was removed to make way for the new one. The site lies towards the base of a steep hill down which the road winds through a park, presenting a bird’s-eye view of the house for some time before it is reached. The buildings stand on a level platform contrived among the declivities of the park, and from a terrace at the back a fine flight of steps leads down to the gardens. The entrance front (Fig. 137) is lengthened by the adjoining orangery, forming a façade of some 220 ft., of which the house itself occupies 130 ft. In the middle of this part is the front door, which opens into a hall (see plan, Fig. 138). Immediately opposite is the door into the saloon, beyond which is a second hall, which leads out to the terrace. A vista is thus formed through the house and on to the gardens. The terrace is flanked on one side by the stable buildings and on the other by a corridor leading to the ancient church. The whole arrangement is symmetrical, stately, and interesting. Being on a reasonable scale the effect is dignified without being overpowering. Time has dealt kindly with the place, and there are no modern restorations to interfere either with the tone or the sentiment of the surroundings.

There is nothing particularly striking about the architecture of the interior, charming though this is; most of the rooms are panelled with the large and boldly moulded panelling of the period (Fig. 139), and there is one in which the effect is very happily enhanced by rich, though subdued gilding. The unusual charm of the house springs from the fact that very few alterations have been made, and that it retains its old furniture, books, and pictures, which combine to produce a fine feeling of old-fashioned comfort and culture.

From the plan (Fig. 138) it will be gathered that many of the rooms communicate with each other and are, in fact, thoroughfare rooms; and in this respect it must be granted that the comfort of those days differed from that of our own. It will also be seen that the saloon is lighted from one end only, an arrangement which, although rendering the room by no means dark, yet detracts somewhat from its cheerfulness and deprives it of all prospect.

An important point in the external treatment, differentiating this house from most of those hitherto mentioned, is that the roof is not visible. Webb made his roofs an important feature, bestowing much care upon their proportion and pitch; here the cornice is surmounted by an open balustrade, and the chimneys, instead of being made to attract the eye, are as inconspicuous as possible.

Talman had adopted the same treatment at Chatsworth, which was being built at this time[62] for the first Duke of Devonshire (Fig. 140). Chatsworth is on a much larger scale than Dyrham, and is far better known to the public. Indeed to many persons it presents itself as the model of what a great nobleman’s seat should be. This is owing to its simple and dignified treatment, and to its admirable situation and the lordly nature of its lay out. When examined closely, it lacks interest and variety in its detail. Some of the rooms, however, are finely proportioned and are decorated with beautiful woodwork and plasterwork; and there are two or three doorways with alabaster mouldings and pediments of remarkable interest. Much of the wood carving, from its style and workmanship, was ascribed for many years to Grinling Gibbons, but the building accounts show that it was in fact executed by a Derbyshire man of the name of Samuel Watson, of Heanor. This is another illustration of the tendency to attribute, in the absence of definite knowledge, any remarkable work to the best known master of the time.

It might have been expected that Wren’s manner would have been continued in the work of his assistant, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and to a certain extent it was; but Hawksmoor was influenced largely by Vanbrugh, who infected him with some of his own passion for the grandiose. The most notable work of Hawksmoor in domestic architecture is Easton Neston, in Northamptonshire, built for William, Lord Lempster, of which a plan (Fig. 142) and elevation are given in “Vitruvius Britannicus.” The principal block, containing the state rooms, is flanked on the plan by outlying wings occupied by the stables and offices, and beyond them the court is widened out, and eventually completed by a monumental arcade or corridor, which obviously could never have been of any practical use. There are no less than five important approaches to the courtyard, through the wings and the arcaded portion; the whole arrangement is designed for stateliness. It is said that the wings were designed by Wren, and that Hawksmoor added the house itself in 1702, some twenty years later.[63] Campbell’s elevation certainly does not confirm the idea that Wren’s hand was employed; there is nothing of his gracious dignity about the portion of the wings there shown. Campbell says that the building was finished in 1713, and that he was indebted to Hawksmoor himself for the original drawings of the house; he does not mention Wren. The central building itself bears the date “A^o Sal. MDCCII” on the frieze, so there is evidently some confusion as to the wings. These might have been built after the house and finished in 1713, but in that case they could hardly have been the work of Wren.

It is noteworthy that the whole of the wings and courtyard were subsequently pulled down,[64] and nothing remains of the original house but the central block. The reason of this destruction was presumably that they were found to be useless and extravagant, as indeed might be expected. The effect has been somewhat spoiled, for the house, unsupported by anything but some buildings wholly unworthy of it, looks gaunt and abrupt; it seems too grand for its size (Fig. 141). It suffers in fact from its grandeur; the large windows are suitable enough for the large rooms, but where the exigencies of the plan bring them into small rooms or passages, they are overwhelming. It is interesting to find that Hawksmoor felt this himself, and that in the two ends of the house he departs from the large scale of the main façades. He has collected as far as possible his small rooms at the two ends, and has given them smaller windows, contriving two floors here in the height of one along the front. The plan of the house follows the stately ideas of the time, which took little count of domestic comfort. The hall was treated in an unusual way; it was formed of three portions, but whereas the middle bay was carried up to the height of two stories, the two end bays were of but one story. The effect was rather fine, as may be seen from the view in Fig. 143. A large floor space was obtained, and also the effect of noble height without the overpowering result which would have followed from carrying the whole of the hall to the height of two stories. But even this restraint left a greater void than suits modern comfort, and the more lofty portion has now been divided by a floor at the level of the cornice. Other alterations, both of disposition and of decoration, have been made. The original hall has become the dining-room, and a new hall has been fashioned to the left of the entrance. The drawing-room, however, retains much of its original treatment, including the elaborate ceiling with figures in high relief in the middle panel, and the walls, which are occupied by panels with rather extravagant frames (Fig 144).

The bulk of Hawksmoors work was concerned with churches, and therefore lies outside the scope of the present inquiry. He was a trained and skilful architect, but contemporary with him figure others who had not received the practical teaching which he enjoyed.

Almost ever since the publication of books on architecture had begun, a certain number of wealthy Englishmen had taken an interest in the subject. Lord Burghley had procured books from abroad in the time of Elizabeth; and as the years went by more and more people studied such publications as were procurable. Webb, it will be remembered, referred to the fact that “most gentry in England at this day have some knowledge in the theory of architecture,” and by the end of the seventeenth century, it had become the fashion among the great and wealthy to take an interest in the subject—that is, in the classic architecture of the books. It is hardly necessary to say that the interest was somewhat superficial, and concerned itself with appearance more than with convenience; it was still the theory rather than “ye practique,” as Webb phrases it, that was studied. The pursuit of the most technical and utilitarian of the arts was thus taken up by amateurs. Wren himself was an amateur when he first began to design. His chief, Sir John Denham, was reckoned by Evelyn “a better poet than architect,” but to do Sir John justice, he does not appear to have advanced a claim to be an architect of any kind. Evelyn was a patron of the arts, and especially of architecture, about which he wrote a book. After him, in the eighteenth century, came Lord Burlington, the most distinguished patron of architecture of that age. He was a patron of architects, too; many of the best known men of the century owed their start in life to the earl. He dabbled in design himself. We are probably justified in calling it dabbling, but it was not so considered at the time, and Horace Walpole, himself a dabbler, speaks of him as a distinguished architect. It was through the munificence of Lord Burlington that many designs of Palladio were published, as well as those drawings left behind him by Webb, which, under the title of “Designs by Inigo Jones,” had so great a vogue at this period.

Of the work usually attributed to Lord Burlington, it may fairly be surmised that the practical part was done by one or other of the men who were profiting by his generosity in their endeavours to become architects. The theoretical part was really not very difficult, for designers had a short way with architectural problems in those days. The general purpose of a building having been considered, its external appearance was then more or less suitably designed. When the elevation was perfected according to the rules of art, the plan was made to fit it, and if the plan did not answer all the purposes for which it was intended, those concerned had to put up with the deficiency. The oft-quoted saying of Lord Chesterfield illustrates this, for when Lord Burlington had designed a beautiful but inconvenient house for General Wade, Lord Chesterfield advised the latter if he could not live in it to his comfort, to take a house opposite and look at it. It should not have been difficult for Lord Burlington to design this particular house, for he had all Webb’s drawings to help him, and among them many examples of this type. So with the Assembly Rooms at York; the large hall is a crib from Palladio’s illustration of a hall after the Egyptian manner, but influenced by a rendering of the same subject by Webb. Webb’s version consists of an oblong room, having a row of columns set some eight feet from the walls, thus forming an aisle all round the room (Fig. 145). The columns carry a wall which is pierced with windows, and which in its turn carries the roof. The outside walls of the ground floor stop short below the windows, and are crowned with a balustraded parapet masking the flat roof over the aisle. Lord Burlington adopted this idea wholesale (Fig. 147), but he made his room much narrower than Webb’s, although of about the same length, and he kept to the general proportions of Palladio. When, however, the treatment of the end of the hall (which was the source of inspiration) was lengthened nearly fourfold to do duty for the sides, the effect became monotonous and poverty-stricken; this is apparent on Burlington’s section (Fig. 146). To the main room he added others of less account, but they are nearly all too long and too narrow, whether for appearance or for use.

Another well-known work of his is his villa at Chiswick (Fig. 148), which was copied from a design of Palladio’s for a villa near Vicenza, but spoilt in the process. Here again there is no originality, and the practical drawbacks are so great as to arouse even Walpole’s criticism, to which, however, he adds the illuminating observation that its faults were condoned by the fact that here, without any trouble, might be obtained picturesque views better worth seeing than many of those fragments of ancient grandeur which travellers sought with infinite labour—an interesting testimonial to scenic architecture.

The other works attributed to Lord Burlington are the dormitory at Westminster, a school and almshouses at Seven-oaks, both illustrated by Kent in his “Designs of Inigo Jones,” and Burlington House, Piccadilly. Of these the dormitory at Westminster was a bald and mutilated version of a design by Wren, and Burlington House was probably designed by Campbell.[65]

But although Burlington cannot be regarded as an architect who did anything great in design, he was a munificent patron of the art and of those who pursued it more practically.

Contemporary with him, and indeed starting a little before him, was another well-known but more skilful amateur, the witty dramatist, Sir John Vanbrugh, who has left behind him some of the largest and most ponderous houses ever built in England. His patrons and friends among the nobility were all esteemed good judges of architecture, and to their judgment he submitted at least one of his largest designs.

Among the noblemen who employed him was the third Earl of Carlisle, who conceived the idea of making himself a magnificent home at Castle Howard, in Yorkshire, to replace the ancient castle of Hinderskelf, which had been brought into the family by marriage with one of the co-heiresses of Lord Dacres. The scheme embraced not only a new palace, but a large lay out of plantations, vistas, lakes, temples, obelisks, lodges, and other objects of interest, such as had been employed by Le Nôtre at Versailles and elsewhere. The completion of his scheme is recorded in verses too bald (one would imagine) to be any but his lordship’s, engraved on an important obelisk. They give the date of commencement as 1702, the inscription is dated 1731, so that year may be held to have witnessed the fulfilment of the main project.

But the house had been occupied long before this; for in 1714 Lady Mary Wortley Montague wrote from Yorkshire to her husband, professing to be “in a great fright” about attempts from Scotland in favour of the Pretender. “The four young ladies at Castle Howard,” she says, were as much alarmed as she was, for their father had gone away and was not likely to return for months. They had asked her to join them, a suggestion which she was inclined to comply with, since Castle Howard would be a safe retreat, although rather like a nunnery, as no mortal man ever entered its doors in the absence of the father.

It must have been early in the year 1699 that the earl called Vanbrugh to his assistance, for the latter writes on the 25th December that he had been that summer at Lord Carlisle’s, and had visited most of the great houses of the North. Amongst others he had been to Chatsworth, where he stayed four or five days, and had shown to the duke all the designs for Castle Howard, which he “absolutely approved.” Since then they had been submitted to a great many other critics, and as no objection had been raised to them, the stone was already being quarried and the foundations were to be laid in the spring. A model of the house was being prepared in wood, which was to be sent to Kensington for the criticism of the king.[66] Thus fortified with general approval the design was carried out, the works extending over some thirty years. The cost must have been very great, and in a later letter Vanbrugh tells how it was met in part, for in July 1707 he says that Lord Carlisle had “£2,000 from the Sharpers, and is gone down to lay it out in his buildings.”[67]

Although the whole of Vanbrugh’s design was not carried out the house is of great size and of palatial magnificence (Fig. 150). Indeed no modern person can be incessantly as grand as the grandeur of the building demands. It requires innumerable servants to keep it in order, innumerable guests to make it cheerful. It involves a great drain upon the owner’s resources, both of temperament and of purse, to fill it with enough people to prevent its being dull, and to maintain it in suitable repair and tidiness. From a practical standpoint the corridors are too many and are out of all proportion to the rooms they serve. There are indeed no rooms of a size commensurate with the outside grandeur; most of them appear small and narrow, their height is as great as their width (Fig. 152), and this must have tended, before the introduction of modern heating, to make them cold. The finest apartment is the hall (Fig. 151), so large and lofty as to occupy an undue proportion of space compared with what is devoted to domestic use. Its effect is more nearly allied to what we are accustomed to associate with a large museum or other public building than with a house.

The view in “Vitruvius Britannicus” does more justice to Vanbrugh’s conception than does the building itself. The house is there shown with a subsidiary court on each side, one being devoted to laundries and so forth, and the other to stables. In front there was to have been a forecourt enclosed by a monumental fence with the main entrance gates on the axial line. Actually but one of the side courts was built, and the forecourt was not carried out. The road, instead of approaching the house directly opposite to the centre of the façade, thus giving the visitor a coup d’œil of the whole vast composition, approaches it laterally, close to the end of one of the wings, and it is only on passing the corner of the wing that the visitor is suddenly aware at close quarters of the recessed entrance front.

The one subsidiary court which was built contains the laundries, and it is in the nature of a shock to see laundry-maids at work amid surroundings almost massive enough for Diocletian himself.

The lay out is of corresponding scenic magnificence. From one direction the house is approached along a far-stretching avenue, which leads up hill and down dale, then beneath a gateway in a long, symmetrically designed range of building crowned with a sturdy pyramid, and so onwards towards a lofty obelisk, the meeting-point of several roads, one of which leads to the house. The formal gardens close to the house surround a large basin, in the midst of which is Atlas bearing up the world, amid the encouragements of four huge tritons who raise great horns towards him across the water. The broad gravel walk along the garden front leads in one direction to the walled fruit gardens; in the other to a smooth grass track which slopes upwards to a copse of beeches. Curving away from this is another grass track which, passing an ordered row of lead figures, comes eventually to a classic temple. Beyond are undulating fields skirting an artificial lake, across which is flung a massive bridge which deserves, even more than that at Wilton, Walpole’s epithet of “theatric,” for it serves no purpose but to adorn the landscape. It spans a sheet of water contrived for little else than to provide the opportunity to build it. Its roadway, deep-grown in grass, leads from nowhere to nowhere. The Palladian bridge at Prior Park, near Bath, illustrated in Fig. 154, is almost an exact replica of that at Wilton.

Still further on, crowning an eminence, stands a huge mausoleum, a noble building designed by Hawksmoor (Fig. 153). It rests on a lofty and spacious platform of irregular symmetry, whereon the friends and tenants of deceased earls may have gathered to await the arrival of the funeral procession as it made its slow way along the grass walks, and after halting at the temple, wound across the rolling fields. Long stone benches suggest the scores of horsemen who dismounted and left their horses to be tended on the ample spaces of the platform. The mausoleum itself is a circular domed building, surrounded by disengaged columns; within it are two chambers; the lower level with the platform, contains the vaults; the upper is the chapel. The latter is approached by long flights of steps, and is itself circular and covered at a great height with a coffered dome. The sweep of the walls within is relieved by eight recesses for an altar, the clergy, and the chief mourners. The vaulted apartment below is massively constructed, and in the thickness of the masonry are contrived many recesses for the reception of coffins. But few have been utilised, and, as the visitor discovers by the light of his taper cavern after cavern still unoccupied and unlikely ever to be filled, as he stands in the chilly spaces of the chapel with its dome soaring far overhead, as he gazes from an angle of the platform across the fields and the grass-grown bridge on to the distant house (Fig. 149), he realises how vastly things have changed, how entirely this fine conception has lost its point, how empty is the pomp of architecture when the habits to which it ministered have ceased.

Castle Howard was a private undertaking. Immense though it was—its total length was to have been 660 ft. had both its courts been built—it was exceeded in size by the palace of Blenheim, which was a national monument to the glory of the British arms, although actually a gift to the Duke of Marlborough. Here Vanbrugh must have been in his element. There was presumably to be no unreasonable limit to the cost; the result was to be monumental. Convenience of arrangement, internal effect, the amenities of daily life were minor considerations. The nation wanted a monument; it should have something which should impress the thousands who would see the exterior, rather than the scores who might possibly see the interior. The house itself was flanked, as at Castle Howard, by two huge courts, one for the stables, the other for the kitchens; the total façade was 850 ft. in length. The approach was along the axial line over a splendid bridge, finer in every way than that at Castle Howard; indeed, it is the most satisfactory piece of design at Blenheim. The house is overwhelmed by its own size (Fig. 155). The eye cannot grasp it in its entirety, and when it studies isolated portions they do not suggest thoughts of domestic pleasures; the colonnades and the turrets are not consecrated by daily use, they are there for scenic effect; the statues are cold abstractions, they are no more germane to Blenheim than to any other grand house. How different is this effect from that of even the largest of the Elizabethan palaces. There grandeur itself was homely. The difference cannot be attributed to increase in size; the absence of homeliness springs not even from the inevitable difference between a palace and a manor house. It is inherent in the changed views prevalent both as to life and as to architecture. The aloofness of the great noble accounts for something, but the desire to produce scenic architecture in preference to creating a home, accounts for more. It underlay nearly all Vanbrugh’s efforts, as indeed it did those of his contemporaries and successors. At Stowe House, near to Buckingham, it is apparent in the sacrifice of the bedroom windows on the south front to the desire for an appearance of solidness and simplicity; it is still more obvious in the treatment of the gardens, presently to be described. Seaton Delaval, in Northumberland, is perhaps Vanbrugh’s most pleasing production, but even here convenience and common sense gave way to display, and the house itself, having been burnt down some few years after it was built, no one has thought it worth while to reinstate it. No one could be comfortable in it if he did.

In one of his houses, at any rate, Vanbrugh did not resort to his usual devices for producing his effects. This was Kimbolton Castle, in Huntingdonshire, which, except on one front which has a great columnar portico, is as gaunt and plain as anyone could desire; and it was made so of set purpose, for Vanbrugh writes to his client, the Earl of Manchester, in July 1707, “I thought it was absolutely best to give it something of the castle air, though at the same time to make it regular, ... so I hope your Lordship will not be discouraged if any Italian you may shew it to, should find fault that it is not Roman; for to have built a front with pilasters and what the orders require, could never have been done with the rest of the castle. I am sure this will make a very noble and masculine show.” And again in the following September, “I shall be much deceived if people do not see a manly beauty in it, when it is up, that they did not conceive could be produced out of such rough materials; but it is certainly the figure and proportions that make the most pleasing fabric, and not the delicacy of the ornaments, a proof of which I am in great hopes to shew your Lordship at Kimbolton.”

There is much sound sense in all this, and every architect will agree that no amount of ornament can redeem a badly proportioned building; but Vanbrugh’s reason for the omission of pilasters, and what the orders require, would have had more point if there had been anything preserved of the ancient castle beyond its name. So far as can be seen there is nothing older than the house itself, and although it was built of the old stones, as Vanbrugh says (and this may be the real reason for so plain a treatment), there is no evidence of earlier working visible upon them.

A casual remark in another letter is of interest, as showing what people thought of some of these large houses. He is speaking of Blenheim in a letter of July 1708. “He (Sir John Coniers) made mighty fine speeches upon the building, and took it for granted no subject’s house in Europe would approach it, which will be true if the Duke of Shrewsbury judges right in saying, ‘There is not in Italy so fine a house as Chatsworth,’ for this of Blenheim is, beyond all comparison, more magnificent than that.” He is certainly right as to magnificence, if not also as to the general pleasurable effect.

Vanbrugh’s houses may be taken as the highest manifestation of the spirit of the age in house building; the exaltation of social grandeur, the scenic magnificence of architecture. That they rather missed the mark in respect of comfort and convenience, as we understand those qualities, was not held to be a great drawback. Yet even contemporary voices were raised in protest, as may be gathered from Pope’s verses on “The Duke of Marlborough’s House at Woodstock,” wherein, after listening to an admirer’s description of its splendour, he suddenly interrupts him:—

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the thirteenth of his admirable Discourses, remarks that Vanbrugh “was defrauded of the due reward of his merit by the wits of the time”; and we can heartily concur in his opinion as a painter, that Vanbrugh, “had originality of invention, he understood light and shade, and had great skill in composition.”

In all these great houses the lay out helped the general effect; the gardens and the groves were designed in the same spirit as the houses which they surrounded. Those at Stowe were the most famous of their time. There was but little formality about them, although they were traversed by a few straight walks and vistas (Fig. 156). They embodied, indeed, the new idea which eschewed formality, and sought to gain the help of nature without apparent effort (Fig. 157). They covered a considerable amount of space, and were diversified by undulations of varied steepness, and by great masses of trees. The landscape thus provided by nature was improved by art. A stream was made to fall here, to wind there, to broaden out into a lake elsewhere. Paths were contrived to pass through thickets, to descend a dell, to curve beneath a lofty mound crowned with a “temple,” to undulate along the edge of a copse and overlook meadows sloping down to the lake. The whole was studded at intervals with buildings, each of which had a character of its own. There were grottoes, temples, arches, rotundas, and columns, designed by Vanbrugh, Leoni, Kent, and others. They were so placed amid the trees, the meadows, and the water as to remind the spectator of pictures of Italian scenery. Half Italy was squeezed into two hundred acres of English countryside. A Corinthian arch admitted the principal approach from Buckingham. There were many temples; among them one to Venus, one to Bacchus, others to the Ancient Virtues, to the Modern Virtues (in ruins—a costly piece of satire which must speedily have palled), to British worthies, to Concord and Victory, to Friendship and to other deities and abstractions. There was Dido’s cave in one place, and St Augustine’s in another, a Fane of Pastoral Poetry elsewhere; there were monuments to people of more or less eminence, archways commemorative of royal visitors, artificial ruins, bridges over artificial waters, a Gothic temple, and a large tablet to a dead dog.