Look here, sir; angels' heads putting
their tongues out, rolled up in cabbage leaves, with a dragon on each
side riding on a broomstick, and the devil looking on from the mouth of
an alligator, sir.[32] Odd, I think; interesting. Then the corners may
be turned by octagonal towers, like the center one in Kenilworth Castle;
with Gothic doors, portcullis, and all, quite perfect; with cross slits
for arrows, battlements for musketry, machicolations for boiling lead,
and a room at the top for drying plums; and the conservatory at the
bottom, sir, with Virginian creepers up the towers; door supported by
sphinxes, holding scrapers in their fore paws, and having their tails
prolonged into warm-water pipes, to keep the plants safe in winter,
etc." The architect is, without doubt, a little astonished by these
ideas and combinations; yet he sits calmly down to draw his elevations;
as if he were a stone-mason, or his employer an architect; and the
fabric rises to electrify its beholders, and confer immortality on its
perpetrator.
[Footnote 32: Actually carved on one of the groins of Roslin Chapel.]
[Illustration: Fig. 12. Old English Mansion. 1837.]
169. This is no exaggeration: we have not only listened to speculations
on the probable degree of the future majesty, but contemplated the
actual illustrious existence, of several such buildings, with sufficient
beauty in the management of some of their features to show that an
architect had superintended them, and sufficient taste in their interior
economy to prove that a refined intellect had projected them; and had
projected a Vandalism, only because fancy had been followed instead of
judgment; with as much _nonchalance_ as is evinced by a perfect poet,
who is extemporizing doggerel for a baby; full of brilliant points,
which he cannot help, and jumbled into confusion, for which he does not
care.
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