GOTHIC VILLA.

DESIGN No. 12.

In this age, when classic architecture is so universally understood, andso successfully practised by many able professors of the art, whoever,thinking for himself, determines to build in the old English style, maybe pronounced a person of independent notions, superior to prejudice,and by inference a man of taste. Notwithstanding the predilection forthe classic, or Italian style, he adopts that which poets and painters* have always admired. To such a one therefore may be addressed somefurther remarks on the aforenamed choice of site.

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A residence in this style of architecture should have its site in theimmediate neighbourhood of old timber, as tall stately trees associatewith the times which a building in the old English style affects. Hence,low grounds are considered to afford more pictorial features than highlands; the enclosures, where old timber abounds, supplying an endlessseries of views of a rural character, which are subject to effects of lightand shadow, that constitute a delight to the imagination, which no otherspecies of the picturesque can produce.

Lofty trees are grand and interesting objects when seen at the distanceof a hundred yards; and when other trees of the same magnitude areviewed as combining with the scene, and at the distance of two, andthen at three hundred yards, some on the lawn, and others on the bordersof the enclosures, reduced in aerial perspective, as seen in the morning,or thrown into masses of shadow, as viewed in the evening, the gleamsof light upon the horizon contrasted with the depth and umbrageoushues of the timber, form sylvan landscapes more enchanting to the eyethan are to be found in the whole scope of the rural picturesque. Allthese landscape charms assimilate with a mansion designed in the oldEnglish style of architecture, whilst a similar structure placed on a sitesurrounded only by young plantations, would be entirely out of cha-racter, a violation of fitness, and a deviation from the acknowledgedprinciples of good taste.

The estimate for this Gothic Villa, if built of brick, stuccoed.. £ 3280.

If with an exterior of stone to the principal front. £ 3980.