t but admire the noble
proportions, the solid construction, the magnificent decorations, which
meet their eyes on every side, whether at Genoa, at Verona, at Venice,
at Florence, or at Rome. But it by no means follows, that what looks so
beautiful, and is so truly elegant and suitable on the Lake of Como,
will preserve the same qualities when erected on the banks of
Windermere; those lovely villas that overlook the _Val d'Arno_, and
where one could be content to spend the rest of one's days, with
Petrarch and Boccacio, and Dante, and Michael Angelo, and Raffaelle,
will not bear transplanting either to Richmond or Malvern. The climate
and the sky and the earth of Tuscany and Piedmont, are not those of
Gloucestershire and Warwickshire; what may be very harmonious in form
and colour when contrasted with the objects of that country which
produced it, may have the most disagreeable effect, and be excessively
inconvenient, in another region with which it has no relation. Not that
the proportions of style and the execution of detail may not be
reproduced in England, if sufficient taste and money be applied,--but
that all surrounding things are out of harmony with the very idea and
existence of the building. The vegetable world is different: the
external and internal qualities of the soil jar with the presence of the
foreign-looking mansion. An English garden is not, nor can be, an
Italian one; an English terrace can never be made to look like an
Italian one; those very effects of light and shade on which the
architect counted when he made his plans and elevations, are not to be
attained under an English sky. The house, however closely it may be
taken from the last Palazzo its noble owner lived in, will only be a
poor-looking copy after all; and he will wonder, as he paces through its
corridors and halls, or views it from every point of the compass on the
outside, what can be the cause of such a failure of his hopes? He hoped
for and expected an impossibility; he thought to raise up a little Italy
in the midst of his Saxon park. Could the experiment end in any thing
else than a failure?

Every climate and every country has its own peculiarities, which the
inhabitants are found to consult, and which all architects will do well
to observe closely before they lay down their plans. The general
arrangement, the plan of a house, will depend upon this class of
external circumstances more than on any other; while the architectural
eff