The Englishman's House

IT has been said that a definition of the picturesque in respect to architecture, or indeed any branch of the fine arts, is scarcely possible. The most able writers on the subject have failed to convey an adequate and popular idea. In fact the term has so great and extensive an application as to forbid exact definition. The architect usually considers that if his building look well when seen by moonlight, or through the medium of a foggy or dull atmosphere, it is picturesque, and he is satisfied. Blenheim Castle and Castle Howard have always been pointed out as eminent examples of the picturesque in buildings. But this quality varies with every change of situation and circumstance under which it can be conceived.

The entrance to the Acropolis of Athens, with its noble equestrian statues in the foreground, the steps between them, and the beautiful temples rising at different heights behind, giving a varied outline, the whole probably delicately coloured, must have been picturesque in the highest degree. The Temple of the Winds and the Monument of Lysicrates were equally examples of the picturesque. Yet although great efforts were made on the publication of Athenian Stuart’s volumes to introduce pure Grecian architecture here, it has obtained no hold with us. St. Pancras Church, and St. Stephen’s, Camden Town, are probably the last specimens in our metropolis. The delicate mouldings of the one are destroyed by the roughness of the climate, and the beautiful figures of the Caryatidæ in the other are covered with soot.

There is no doubt that the Roman temples were as picturesque and as varied in outline as the Grecian buildings of which they were studies, but none remain sufficiently perfect to illustrate them. In their original, entire state, with the surfaces and colour smooth and even, either in painting or reality, they were beautiful; in ruins, there is no denying they are highly picturesque. Observe the process by which time, the great author of such changes works, first by means of weather stains, partial incrustations, mosses, &c., which simultaneously take off the uniformity of surface and of colour, giving a degree of roughness, and variety of tint. Then the various accidents of weather loosen the stones themselves: they tumble in irregular masses upon what was perhaps smooth turf or pavement, or nicely trimmed walks and shrubberies, now mixed and overgrown with wild plants and creepers that crawl over and shoot among the falling ruins. Sedums, wall-flowers, and other plants that bear drought, find nourishment in the decayed cement from which the stones have been detached; birds convey their food into the chinks, and yew, elder, and other berried plants project from the sides; while the ivy mantles over other parts, and crowns the top.