cture.

With the accession of William and Mary, England and the Continent became
more closely united. French, Spanish, and Florentine styles of dress
became the fashion, and furniture designed in the Flemish and Dutch
workshops succeeded to the heavier examples of the preceding reigns. The
opening of the China trade and the importation of Delft porcelain
exerted a marked influence upon the tastes of society. An affected
admiration for Dutch topiary also became a fashion. It flourished for a
time, and reached its utmost limit of quaint absurdity in the reign of
Queen Anne.

Architecture also felt the influence of the Dutch school: brick was by
law and custom the vernacular building-material of London, as it was of
the Netherlands, and high-stepped gables with wavy lines became
frequent. Broken pediments with volute terminals were placed over doors
and windows; while a slight admixture of wrought and moulded bricks was
often added to give some degree of elegance and richness to the facades.
This use of moulded brick had played a prominent part in the old Tudor
works; but Parliament had placed heavy and almost prohibitory taxes upon
its manufacture and that of glass, thus vitiating the taste of the
designer by the necessity for studying strict economy in construction.
The manor-houses erected during the reigns of William and Anne are of a
different type: they are bold and massive, picturesque in outline, and
semi-classic in detail.

Through the Georgian reigns and that of William IV. the taste for Free
Classic continued, gradually becoming more debased, with a few feeble
attempts at a revival of mediaeval work, as shown by Walpole at
Strawberry Hill; while in the cities the schools of Nash and Wyatt were
stuccoing the honest brick-work of their street-fronts into bad
imitations of Roman palaces. This called forth such epigrams as,--

Augustus of old was for building renowned,--
For of marble he left what of brick he had found;
But is not our Nash a still greater master?
He found London brick, and will leave it plaster.

The earlier years of Victoria's reign were marked by aspirations for a
better state of things, and discussions between the rival schools of
Classicists and Mediaevalists. The latter carried the day, and, after an
heroic struggle and many failures, England awoke from her long lethargy,
to find herself the possessor of a noble architecture, a true exponent
of ecclesiastical art and tradition, al