layer gets the management, his delight is to show his skill in defying Common-sense, and conquering difficulties of his own making. He rubs his bricks, not only each, from the center either way, to a different radius, but he forms each side of each brick to a different radius, that those abutting on the piers may lie horizontally, as in a semicircular or an elliptical arch. Thus he alters the essential properties of the Diocletian arch, and loses much of the strength belonging to its principle. But he gains pay for more labor, and, perhaps with the ignorant, credit and increased pay still proportioned to that credit, for an operation certainly requiring more skill and practice than the method of better science and better use.

A more common practice still, a very little matter in itself, yet so adapted to illustrate the principle that I will mention it, is observable in what the builders call a flat arch. When such an arch is to be constructed, of what is called single brick, the bricklayer constantly wastes his labor (not for himself; he is paid for it, but for his employer) in making a more perfect material look like a more imperfect one. The arch is formed of intire bricks; use so requiring, for the strength of the work; but a notch is sawed in every other one, and filled with mortar, to make it look like two half bricks; so giving the work a studied appearance of defect. I remember

me.

it an observation of my northern friend, that, much as elegance and fine effect fail in the Plantagenet exterior, Common-sense is hardly ever found tripping there. I have looked extensively, he said, for nonsense in it, and if any has ever fallen within my line of observation, it has escaped Once I thought I had detected it, in a church-tower in Lancashire. An octagonal story is set on a square basement, and above it another octagon with the angles of the upper in the middle of the sides of the lower. In some points of view this complex form appeared more, in others less, light and well-proportioned. But, in considering it, the common-sense became obvious. angles of the square basement are as buttresses for the firmer support of the octagon, next above,. .whose angles are equally buttresses supporting the sides of the superstructure. The idea is exactly the reverse of that of the flying coins of the county-jail at Winchester.

The

As the Plantagenet style however went into decay, Nonsense got footing in it. When the pointed arch grew flat, and wood became a common material, a single beam, which, in its simple rectilinear form, would have served the purpose well, was cut to a nick in the middle, to make the fashionable arch; so producing weakness, where strength was most wanted. From wood the evil trick passed to stone; and, in distant

parts of England, especially in the north, the foolish practice remained almost to the late revival of public. fancy for the Anglo-Gothic architecture, from which that foolish practice has. found extensive favor.

After these little matters, to rise again, before I conclude, to more splendid examples, the most splendid nonsense in architecture, that I know, and I think I may add, the most abundant, is peculiar to Italy, but seen, especially at Rome; introduced by Borromini's genius to favor there. Even France revolted at the more egregious of the inept fopperies: but she adopted some which, with French recommendation, got footing here. The broken pediment, and even the broken pediment in a curling form, (you will, I think, from your recollection of the thing, be aware of what I mean, and I know not how else to describe it) had their vogue in the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, between Inigo Jones's days and lord Burlington's.

Nonsense is much less seen in interior than in exterior architecture. In private houses this may have been, with us, as with the French, because provision of interior effect is committed less to the architect than to the upholsterer. I will desire however, to recall your attention to an example, which I have formerly noticed, in a

building of the first consideration, saint Paul's church, and I will conclude with it.

You will remember my objecting to the little domes, or, as I have ventured to call them, domelets, in the vault of the nave of that splendid building. If the term nonsense may seem harshly applied to them, I would describe their character, as it strikes my mind, by comparing them to a fair epithet in poetry, of harmonious sound, and powerful sense, but so introduced as, instead of assisting the expression, to disturb and weaken it.

LETTER XXXV.

Domestic Architecture.-Cottages and Villages.

I COME now to the branch of my subject which I have reserved for the last, building for that large and most valuable part of the community employed in the labors of husbandry. Were strict limitation to architectonic design insisted on, the field here would be very scanty; but with allowance to dilate on connected matter, it were very wide. You will allow me, I trust, some episodical scope, and I shall endeavour to use the indulgence discreetly.

I have observed in a former letter (XXVIII) that, under our Anglo-saxon forefathers, the towns of England were small and little populous; and yet after all the evils of the Danish inroads, and the establishment of the Danish dynasty, and the revolution which restored the Anglosaxon, the country was altogether well peopled. Things have strangely altered since. In the towns what increase has been, even within memory! What a prodigious city is London become! What buildings at Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool! What villages, beyond cities of old times, have grown about the old towns of Newcastle-under-line! What haunts for luxury and dissipation have arisen in the