Castle Fraser, the old
portions of Dunrobin Castle, Tyninghame House, the extremely
picturesque palace at Falkland, and a considerable part of Stirling
Castle, may be all quoted as good specimens of this thoroughly
national style, but it would be easy to name two or three times as
many buildings nearly, if not quite, equal to these in architectural
merit.

Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh, may be quoted (with part of Holyrood
Palace) as showing the style of the seventeenth century. Heriot's
Hospital was built between the years 1628 and 1660. It is built round
a great quadrangle, and has square towers at the four corners, each
relieved by small corbelled angle turrets. The entrance displays
columns and an entablature of debased but not unpleasing Renaissance
architecture, and the building altogether resembles an English
Elizabethan or Jacobean building to a greater extent than most
Scottish designs.

When this picturesque style, which appears indeed to have retained its
hold for long, at last died out, very little of any artistic value was
substituted for it. Late in the eighteenth century, it is true, the
Brothers Adam erected public buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and
carried out various works of importance in a classic style which has
certainly some claim to respect; but if correct it was tame and
uninteresting, and a poor exchange for the vigorous vitality which
breathes in the works of the architects of the early Renaissance in
Scotland.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

In the Spanish peninsula, Renaissance architecture ran through three
phases, very strongly distinguished from one another, each being
marked by peculiarities of more than ordinary prominence. The early
stage, to which the Spaniards give the name of Plateresco, exhibits
the same sort of fusion of Gothic with classic which we find in France
and Scotland. The masses are often simple, but the individual features
are overladen with an extravagant amount of ornament, and, as in
France, many things which are essentially Gothic, such as pinnacles,
gargoyles, and parapets, are retained. The Renaissance style was
introduced at the latter part of the fifteenth century, and a very
considerable number of buildings to which the description given above
will apply were erected prior to the middle of the sixteenth. Among
these may be enumerated the cathedral at Granada, the Hospital of
Santa Cruz at Toledo (1504-1514), the dome of Burgos Cathedral (1567),
the Cathedra