AN ITALIAN VILLA,

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DESIGN No. 17.

PERSPECTIVE VIEW,—PLATE XXXVIII.

TWO ELEVATIONS,—PLATE XXXIX.

PLANS OF GROUND FLOOR AND CHAMBER FLOOR,—PLATE XL.

The modern Anglo-Italian, as this particular species of architecture,might, for distinction’s sake, very well be denominated, tolerates manyfreedoms which in a more finished and consistent style would notunjustly incur censure. One of its characteristics is, that it can dis-pense with strictness as to detail; another, that it affects a certainunconstrained liveliness, tending towards the fanciful, if not thefrivolous, and which, exceptionable as it would be in buildings thatrequire to be treated with greater harmony and chasteness—not to saywith some degree of severity—is far from being out of place wherecheerfulness is the quality principally aimed at. In these respects, itforms a striking antithesis to the Palladian-Italian, and to those dull,formal, frigid imitations of it, tolerably abundant in this country somehundred years ago, and which when, as not unfrequently happened,upon a trifling scale, acquired double insignificance from the grotesqueheaviness of the architecture.

Among those features which contribute in no small degree to thecheerfulness above alluded to, are lofty windows descending very nearlynot only to the internal floor but to the ground itself. The viranda,which is utterly incompatible with either the Palladian or the Greekstyle, and could hardly be rendered other than an offensive anomalyin them, may be applied here, not merely without impropriety, but withexceedingly good effect, and that too in a variety of modes. Turrets,again, are in keeping with the general character of the style; neither issome degree of license inadmissable as to the arrangement of windows,either in the same or different stories of a building. Where, moreover,

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