th all again is declared
right, the supervisor delivers his _way-bill_, and forward moves the
coach, at a somewhat brisker pace, to Kennington Common. I shall not
detain my readers here with a long dull account of the unfortunate
rebels who suffered on this spot in 1745; but rather direct their
attention to a neat Protestant church, which has recently been erected
on the space between the two roads leading to Croydon and Sutton, the
portico of which is in fine architectural taste, and the whole
building a very great accommodation and distinguished ornament to the
neighbourhood. About half a mile farther, on the rise of Brixton hill,
is another newly erected church, the portico in the style of a Greek
temple, and in an equally commanding situation: from this to Croydon,
ten miles, you have a tolerable specimen of civic taste in rural
architecture.

On both sides of the road may be seen a variety of incongruous edifices,
called villas and cottage _ornees_, peeping up in all the pride of a
retired linen-draper, or the consequential authority of a man in office,
in as many varied styles of architecture as of dispositions in the
different proprietors, and all exhibiting (in their possessors' opinion)
claims to the purest and most refined taste.

For example, the basement story is in the Chinese or Venetian style,
the first floor in that of the florid Gothic, with tiles and a
pediment _a-la-Nash_, at the Bank; a doorway with inclined jambs, and a
hieroglyphic _a-la-Greek_: a gable-ended glass _lean to_ on

1 A day-rule, so called.

~281~~one side, about big enough for a dog-kennel, is called a
green-house, while a similar erection on the other affords retirement
for the _tit_ and tilbury; the door of which is always set wide open
in fine weather, to display to passers-by the splendid equipage of the
occupier. The parterre in front (green as the jaundiced eye of their
less fortunate brother tradesmen) is enriched with some dozens of
vermilion-coloured flower-pots mounted on a japanned verdigris frame,
sending forth odoriferous, balmy, and enchanting gales to the grateful
olfactory organs, from the half-withered stems of pining and consumptive
geraniums; to complete the picture, two unique plaster casts of naked
figures, the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de Medici, at most a foot
in altitude, are placed on clumsy wooden pedestals of three times that
height before the parlour-windows, painted in a chaste flesh-colour,