n creepers up the towers; door supported by
sphinxes, holding scrapers in their fore paws, and having their tails
prolonged into warm-water pipes, to keep the plants safe in winter,
etc." The architect is, without doubt, a little astonished by these
ideas and combinations; yet he sits calmly down to draw his elevations;
as if he were a stone-mason, or his employer an architect; and the
fabric rises to electrify its beholders, and confer immortality on its
perpetrator.

[Footnote 32: Actually carved on one of the groins of Roslin Chapel.]

[Illustration: Fig. 12. Old English Mansion. 1837.]

169. This is no exaggeration: we have not only listened to speculations
on the probable degree of the future majesty, but contemplated the
actual illustrious existence, of several such buildings, with sufficient
beauty in the management of some of their features to show that an
architect had superintended them, and sufficient taste in their interior
economy to prove that a refined intellect had projected them; and had
projected a Vandalism, only because fancy had been followed instead of
judgment; with as much _nonchalance_ as is evinced by a perfect poet,
who is extemporizing doggerel for a baby; full of brilliant points,
which he cannot help, and jumbled into confusion, for which he does not
care.

170. Such are the first difficulties to be encountered in villa designs.
They must always continue to occur in some degree, though they might be
met with ease by a determination on the part of professional men to give
no assistance whatever, beyond the mere superintendence of construction,
unless they be permitted to take the whole exterior design into their
own hands, merely receiving broad instructions respecting the style (and
not attending to them unless they like). They should not make out the
smallest detail, unless they were answerable for the whole. In this
case, gentlemen architects would be thrown so utterly on their own
resources, that, unless those resources were adequate, they would be
obliged to surrender the task into more practiced hands; and, if they
were adequate, if the amateur had paid so much attention to the art as
to be capable of giving the design perfectly, it is probable he would
not erect anything strikingly abominable.

171. Such a system (supposing that it could be carried fully into
effect, and that there were no such animals as sentimental stone-masons
to give technical assistance) might, at first, see