We have thus particularized the Tudor mansion, because we believe that for a cold country like England or the United States, it has strong claims upon the attention of large landed proprietors, or those who wish to realize in a country residence the greatest amount of comfort and enjoyment. With the addition, here, of a veranda, which the cool summers of England render needless, we believe the Tudor Gothic to be the most convenient and comfortable, and decidedly the most picturesque and striking style, for country residences of a superior class.* The materials generally employed in their construction in England, are stone and brick; and of late years, brick and stucco has come into very general use. The Elizabethan Style, that mode of building so common in England in the 17th century,-a mixture of Gothic and Grecian in its details-is usually considered as a barbarous kind of architecture, wanting in purity of taste. Be this as it may, it cannot be denied that in the finer specimens of this style, there is a surprising degree of richness and picturesqueness for which we may look in vain elsewhere. In short it seems, in the best examples, admirably fitted for a bowery, thickly foliaged country, like England, and for the great variety of domestic enjoyments of its inhabitants. In the most florid examples of this style, of which many specimens yet remain, we often meet with every kind. of architectural feature and ornament, oddly, and often grotesquely combined-pointed gables, dormer-windows, steep and low roofs, twisted columns, pierced parapets, and *The residence of Samuel E. Lyon, Esq., at White Plains, N. Y., Fig. 54, is a very pleasing example of the Tudor Cottage. The seat of Robert Gilmor, Esq., near Baltimore, in the Tudor style, is a very extensive pile of building. broad windows with small lights. Sometimes, the effect of this fantastic combination is excellent, but often bad. The florid Elizabethan style, is, therefore, a very dangerous one in the hands of any one but an architect of profound taste; but we think in some of its simpler forms, (fig. 55,) it may be adopted for country residences here in picturesque situations with a quaint and happy effect.* The English cottage style, or what we have denominated Rural Gothic, contains within itself all the most striking and peculiar elements of the beautiful and picturesque in its exterior, while it admits of the greatest possible variety of accommodation and convenience in internal arrangement. In its general composition, Rural Gothic really differs from the Tudor style more in that general simplicity which serves to distinguish a cottage or villa of moderate size from a mansion, than inany marked character of its own. The squareheaded windows preserve the same form, and display the Gothic label and mullions, though the more expensive finish of decorative tracery is frequently omitted. Diagonal, or latticed lights are also more commonly seen in the cottage style, than in the mansion. The general form and arrangement of the building, though, of course, much reduced, is * A highly unique residence in the old English style, is Pelham Priory, the seat of the Rev. Robert Bolton, near New Rochelle, N. Y., Fig., 56. The exterior is massive and picturesque, in the simplest taste of the Elizabethan age, and being built amidst a fine oak wood, of the dark rough stone of the neighborhood, it has at once the appearance of considerable antiquity. The interior is constructed and fitted up throughout in the same feeling,—with harmonious wainscoting, quaint carving, massive chimney pieces, and old furniture and armour. Indeed we doubt if there is, at the present moment, any recent private residence, even in England, where the spirit of the antique is more entirely carried out, and where one may more easily fancy himself in one of those "mansions builded curiously" of our ancestors in the time of "good Queen Bess." |