e of other races. As pointed out in the last
issue in speaking of the country houses of France, the impulse to
associate in communities has been a stronger power in moulding the
domestic architecture of France than the desire to have an independent
home. In England the isolated house is the type. The social unit is the
family, and consequently the architectural unit is the "home." The
English character has given to the family an independence and privacy,
a permanence and sacredness which are all reflected in the English
houses, and it is this which makes them homes. The evidence of these
characteristics is what has attracted Mr. Eyre and many other Americans
besides, and will continue to do so for years to come.
[Illustration:
CHAPEL, DEERHURST. SKETCH BY WILSON EYRE, Jr.
From The Architectural Review, Vol. IV, No. 1.]
English architecture is not all and never has been all of the sort here
indicated, but where it departs from this type we feel the peculiar
charm somewhat lacking. The early Saxon hut, the Norman castle, have
each their especial interest, and we feel that the home has culminated
in the Elizabethan and Tudor mansions and the simpler homes of later
days which are adjusted to the needs of the family and suited to its
surroundings, because built honestly with due regard to the necessities,
and even if, as Ruskin says, their detail is abominable and there is no
precedent, no right nor reason in the square drip moulding over the
windows, yet we love them as a whole, and cannot help feeling that they
expressed truly the story they were intended to tell. But we do not feel
the same instinctive attraction in the Palladian mansions of Jones,
however accurately classical are their proportions or their mouldings,
nor in any other of the dignified importations transplanted from Greece
or Rome and forced to grow on uncongenial soil. They must ever be to us
exotics, with perhaps the beauty of the exotic, but without the homely
qualities which endear to us the real home.
[Illustration: XCIV.
Smithells, England.]
[Illustration: XCV.
Saintesbury Hall, England.]
LXXXIX.
OLD HOUSES, HANOVER, ENGLAND.
XC.
MIDDLE HOUSE, MAYFIELD, SUSSEX, ENGLAND.
XCI.
OLD HALL, WORSLEY, ENGLAND.
XCII AND XCIII.
SPEKE HALL, ENGLAND.
XCIV.
SMITHELLS, ENGLAND.
XCV.
SAINTESBURY HALL, ENGLAND.
XCVI TO XCVIII.
OLD MANOR HOUSE, LYTHE HILL, ENGLAND.
XCIX.
OLD FARM H
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