Court to make way for Wren's erection. A Dutch taste, indeed, it was which levelled all those stately buildings to the ground, to make room for the great square mass which replaced them. A glorious view, if old drawings are to be believed, must all that vast and picturesque variety of towers, battlements, tall mullioned windows, cupolas, and pinnacles, have made, as they stood under the clear heaven glittering in the sun. The writers who saw it in its glory describe it in its entireness as the most splendid palace in Europe. Of the campaniles of Wren, St. Bride's, Fleet-st.; that of Bow Church, Cheapside; St. Dunstan in the East; and the tower of St. Michael's, Cornhill, are the finest. The last is almost his only Gothic one, and that would have been a fine tower had the ornament been equally diffused over it, and not all been huddled too near the top. Wren was thwarted in his design of the London Monument.
GREENWICH HOSPITAL.
He drew a plan for one with gilt flames issuing from the loop-holes, and surrounded by a phoenix, but as no such design could be found in the five orders it was rejected, and the present commonplace affair erected. One of his last undertakings was the repair of Westminster Abbey, to which he added the towers at the west end, and proposed to erect a spire in the centre. Sir Christopher left a large quantity of drawings, which are preserved in All Souls' College library, Oxford, which have never been engraved.
The next great architect of this period is Sir John Vanbrugh, who, when in the zenith of his fame as a dramatic writer, suddenly started forth as an architect, and had the honour of erecting Castle Howard, the seat of the earl of Carlisle; Blenheim House, built for the duke of Marlborough, in reward of his victories; Duncomb Hall, Yorkshire; King’s Weston, in Gloucestershire; Oulton Hall, Cheshire; Grimsthorpe, in Lincolnshire; Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, now destroyed; and Seaton Delaval, in Northumberland, since partly destroyed by fire. Besides these, he built the opera house, also destroyed by fire. In all these there is a strong similarity, and as a general effect, a certain magnificence; but, when examined in detail, they too generally resolve themselves into a row of individual designs merely arranged side by side. This is very much the case with the long façade of Blenheim. The main idea recurring again and again is that of a great Grecian peristyle and pediment in the centre, surmounted by another pediment, or a dome, and other such buildings ranged right and left at different heights; the whole united by stretches of plane façade, and plentifully surrounded by vases and images. There is a barbaric splendour, but it has no pervading unity, and only differs from the Italian manner of Wren by a much bolder and profuser use of the Grecian columns and pilasters. In fact, the architecture of the whole of this period is of a hybrid character, the classical more or less modified and innovated to adapt it to modern purposes and the austerity of a northern climate. From Inigo Jones, the great disciple of Vitruvius and Palladio, who adhered as closely to the Grecian as his Italian taste permitted him, down to Colin Campbell and Kent, whose country mansions, like Wanstead, generally consisted of a huge, oblong, square mass of plainest building, with two or three rows of windows, a parapeted top hiding the roof, and a great Grecian pediment, or colonnade in the centre—baldness and ornament meagrely wedded—the same style prevailed.
Amongst the most distinguished of this series of architects is James Gibbs, who after studying in Italy, returned to this country in time to secure the erection of some of the
