windows are admirably designed, and being sparingly distributed, they leave an air of solidity and grandeur on the wall. The interior distribution accords with the length of front. One line of doors enfilades the apartments, and lays open the whole house; a plan rather incommodious for private life, but very proper for a gala, and suited to a hot climate. In every house lower rooms are vaulted; the upper apartments are hung very generally with silk, never with paper. The walls are coated with a stucco, which is rather gritty, but well adapted for fresco painting. Columns are not always employed in public works, and where they are not, very consistently. In the "Piazza della St. Munziata," the porticoes are composed of arches, resting on Corinthian columns, an Italian combination everywhere wrong, and here very meagre in its effects. In the Uffizzi the columns stand too high for so solid an order as the Doric. The designs of the architect, M. Bianchi de Lugano, are here tolerably free from that crowd of ornaments and angles which constitute the modern petitesse, and which call for reproof, even in the works of Michael Angelo. Speaking of the multitude of pilasters in the front of the houses at Florence, Parma, and Padua, and of their crowded cornices, and confusion of angles. Count Stendal says, "Our people cannot raise their ideas so far as to comprehend, that the ancients did nothing for the mere purpose of ornament, but that the beautiful with them was never unconnected with the useful.* Of the villas, those built by Lewis Cornardo, at Padua, (a place from whence the study of our Florentine villa was obtained,) are well worthy of some notice. This Italian count, having studied eligible situations, and the principles of architecture, applied both to practice. "My villa," says he," at Padua, (See his Treatise, 'SURE METHODS OF ATTAINING A LONG AND HEALTHFUL LIFE,') situated in the most beautiful part of the Euganean hills, is in itself really handsome as well as convenient; such, in a word, as it is now no longer the fashion to build; for in one part of it I can shelter myself from extreme heat, and in the other from extreme cold, having constructed the apartments according to the subject of architecture, which teach us what is to be observed in practice. I have another villa in the plain, which is laid out in regular streets, all terminating in a large square, in the middle of which stands the church, suited to the circumstances of the place. This villa is divided by a wide and rapid branch of the river Brenta, on both sides of which there is a considerable extent of country, consisting of fertile and well-cultivated fields. Besides, this district is now exceedingly well inhabited, which it was not at first, but rather the reverse, for it was very marshy, and the air so unwholesome, as to make it a residence fitter for adders than men. But in my draining off the waters the air mended, and people resorted to it so fast, and increased to such a degree, that it soon acquired the perfection in which it now appears. Hence, I may say with truth, that I have given in this place an altar and a temple to God, with souls to adore him. These are things which afford me infinite pleasure, comfort, and satisfaction, as often as I go to see and enjoy them."+ * Count Stendal's Sketches of the present state of Society and Manners, Arts and Literature, in Rome, Naples, and Florence. + The environs of Florence are Elysian, and in the summer this abode of Hygeia, on the heights of Fiesole, on a fine evening is truly enchanting. From this eminence is to be seen the Val d'Arno, and palaces, villas, convents, and towns seated on the hills, all diffused through the vale in the very points and combinations in which a Claude would have placed them. "Monti superbi la cui fronte Alpina, Fadi se centro; venti argine e sponda ! L' Ano con passo rignoril cammina! This Italian town, like that of Sparta in Greece, stands on the side of a hill precipitously steep. The front of it is cut into a gradation of narrow terraces, which are enclosed in a trellis of vines, and faced with loose stone walls. Such a facing may, perhaps, cost less to cover, and add more warmth to the plantation than turf embankments, but it gives a hard, dry, effect to the intermediate picture, which, viewed from Florence, is the most splendid object in this region of beauty. PLATES XX.-XXI. A CHATEAU IN THE FLEMISH STYLE. "Tully Veolan, situated within an inclosed park, in whose barrier-wall was a noble arched and battlemented entrance, was joined by a double avenue of trees, that lead to the mansion, composed alternately of horse-chesnut and sycamore, which rose to such a height that their boughs overarched the broad road beneath. The lower gate, opening into a courtlage, like the former, was ornamented with sculpture, arms, and battlements on the top; over which were seen, half-hidden by the trees of the avenue, the high steep roofs and narrow gables of the house, with lines indented into steps, and corners decorated with small turrets. It had been built at a period when castles were no longer necessary, and when the architects had not yet acquired the art of designing a domestic residence. The windows were numerous and small; the roof had some nondescript kind of projections, called bartizans, and displayed at each frequent angle a small turret, rather resembling a pepper-box."*-Waverly, Chap. viii. p. 75. THE Dutch architecture is not noble; wanting elegance, chasteness, and purity of detail; now, for the true Flemish style of building, we must look to Antwerp; the principal houses of which city are built with a kind of sandstone, others are constructed with bricks, and the gables formed into steps; the streets are generally wide, and it may be called a well-built city. It is said to contain twenty-six public places or squares, of which the Meer, the finest, contains a palace; there are seventy public buildings, and one hundred and sixty-two streets. The chief public buildings are the Bourse or Exchange, said to be the model from which those of Amsterdam and that lately destroyed in London, were taken; it is however far superior to either of them. The pillars that support its gallery around the colonnade are of marble. The town-hall is also reckoned a fine structure. Antwerp, like many other continental cities, excel our English ones by the decoration of trees. Along the whole line of the new quay a row of elms are growing, which make a fine summer promenade, like the Mall of St. James's Park, in London. Most of the houses have flights of steps, in the rear circular staircase towers; and in front the step gables are towards the street. In some parts of the town they are constructed with double step gable fronts; one towards the street and the other towards the canal. The stone-fronted houses have generally balconies and columns in the Italian style. The chimneys of many of the houses are surmounted, not with circular pats, but with square wooden frames, consisting of four small pats, capped with an horizontal board, and open on every side. When built of brick, those are usually formed in the shape of the Roman letter Y. The apartments are mostly ornamented with taste, very much in the French manner, and the walls frequently painted with a series of landscapes in oil-colours, instead of being hung with paper or stuccoed. All the principal dwellings have a profusion of windows of large plate-glass, but this is more for the sake of ornament than light, for the Dutch are so fond of retirement, that the blinds in the houses are seldom drawn up. The city of Amsterdam, the capital of Holland, is built in the form of a crescent, and is nine miles and a half in circumference; it covers a space of about nine hundred acres, and is surrounded by a ditch about eight feet wide, bounded by an avenue of stately trees; the ground being marshy, the whole city is built on piles, which occasioned the celebrated Erasmus, when he visited this place, to observe, that he had reached a city "where the inhabitants, like crows, lived on the tops of trees." *This is a true character of a Flemish château, many of which were erected in Scotland by the Flemings, when they fled there from the persecutions in Flanders by the Duke de Alva.-(Author.) "The peculiarity of the description of Tully Veolan occurs in various old Scottish seats. The house of Warrender, upon Bremsfield Links, and that of Old Ravelstone, belonging, the former to Sir George Warrender, the latter to Sir Alexander Keith, now both contributed several hints to the above description. The house of Dean, near Edinburgh, has also some points resembling Tully Veolan. The author has, however, been informed, that the house of Grand Tully resembles that of the Baron of Bradwardine, still more than any of the above."-(Note to Waverly, vol. i. p. 82.) |