y
vista is found in its perfection only in England: it is an attribute of
green country; it is associated with all our memories of forest freedom,
of our wood-rangers, and yeomen with the "doublets of the Lincoln
green;" with our pride of ancient archers, whose art was fostered in
such long and breezeless glades; with our thoughts of the merry chases
of our kingly companies, when the dewy antlers sparkled down the
intertwined paths of the windless woods, at the morning echo of the
hunter's horn; with all, in fact, that once contributed to give our land
its ancient name of "merry" England; a name which, in this age of steam
and iron, it will have some difficulty in keeping.

153. This, then, is the first feature we would direct attention to, as
characteristic, in the English villa: and be it remembered, that we are
not speaking of the immense lines of foliage which guide the eye to some
of our English palaces, for those are rather the adjuncts of the park
than the approach to the building; but of the more laconic avenue, with
the two crested columns and the iron gate at its entrance, leading the
eye, in the space of a hundred yards or so, to the gables of its gray
mansion. A good instance of this approach may be found at Petersham, by
following the right side of the Thames for about half a mile from
Richmond Hill; though the house, which, in this case, is approached by a
noble avenue, is much to be reprehended, as a bad mixture of imitation
of the Italian with corrupt Elizabethan; though it is somewhat
instructive, as showing the ridiculous effect of statues out of doors in
a climate like ours.

154. And now that we have pointed out the kind of approach most
peculiarly English, that approach will guide us to the only style of
villa architecture which can be called English,--the Elizabethan, and
its varieties,--a style fantastic in its details, and capable of being
subjected to no rule, but, as we think, well adapted for the scenery in
which it arose. We allude not only to the pure Elizabethan, but even to
the strange mixtures of classical ornaments with Gothic forms, which we
find prevailing in the sixteenth century. In the most simple form, we
have a building extending round three sides of a court, and, in the
larger halls, round several interior courts, terminating in sharply
gabled fronts, with broad oriels, divided into very narrow lights by
channeled mullions, without decoration of any kind; the roof relieved by
p