A corresponding unity of effect is achieved in the best examples of wooden domestic buildings, such as the Craigie House, Longfellow’s home in Cambridge; the Sherburn House, Portsmouth, and innumerable other examples throughout New England. They are characterised by the choice proportions and distribution of the windows, by the pilasters running up through two stories, to a well-designed cornice, broken in the centre by a pediment that serves as a porch. The roofs vary. Some are flat; some slope up from front and rear, with a gable at each end. In other cases, the continuous slope is broken by a gambrel into two slopes, forming an obtuse angle, as in the Mansard roof. While again, the roof may be hipped, sloping up, that is to say, from all four sides, the four planes meeting in hips or ridges.

While similar styles of roofs and windows reappear in the Southern Colonial type of house the latter is distinguished by the addition of a verandah. It may take the form of a pedimented portico, composed of colossal columns, carried up to the cornice, or of a colonnade extending along the entire front and frequently consisting of two stories; the floor beams of the upper one being let into the columns—a device that violates structural propriety but may be overlooked in the comfortable dignity of the whole design. The latter in some cases covers an extended, symmetrical plan, as, for example, in Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, where the main block is connected by curving colonnades with the kitchen wing on one side and offices on the other, while the slave-quarters were in detached buildings, separated by formal gardens from the mansion. The comparative smallness of the latter emphasises the suggestion of the patriarchal character of the best of the old Southern life before the Civil War, while the quiet dignity of the exterior is repeated in the spirit of refined and gentle breeding that pervades the interior.

Both in Southern and Northern Colonial houses the wainscots, door-and window-trims, the mantelpieces, cornices, and balustraded staircases exhibit a choiceness of design, derived from the models of Adam and Sheraton.

BOOK VII
POST-RENAISSANCE PERIOD

CHAPTER I
CLASSICAL AND GOTHIC REVIVALS

In the latter half of the eighteenth century commenced a Classical Revival, which in the various countries that it affected lasted far on into the nineteenth. In some directions it represented a reaction from the debased Renaissance styles of the baroque and rococo; in all it was largely promoted by a more accurate study of antiquities and by the discovery of the distinction between Greek and Roman art. Its effect upon architecture was but one phase of its influence, which penetrated more or less the thought of the world and found expression in literature. This revival belongs rather to a history of architecture than to a study of fundamentals, such as this book has attempted. Accordingly we must be satisfied here with a brief sketch of the subjects. To continue the thread of the previous chapter let us start with the appearance of the classical revival in Great Britain.

CLASSICAL REVIVAL IN GREAT BRITAIN

English Exploration.—The “Revival of Learning” had been followed in England by a continuous fondness for Greek and Roman literature. Milton, as late as 1654, was writing his political tracts in Latin; and, although such use of the language was abandoned, a familiarity with Latin and at least some acquaintance with Greek continued through the rest of this century and the following one to be the ordinary mark of an educated gentleman. In 1647 Dryden popularised the Æneid of Virgil by translating it, and in 1720 Pope produced his translation of Homer’s Iliad. For the promotion of arts and letters the Dilettanti Society was founded in 1734; and some twenty years later financed the archæological exploration of Stuart and Revett in Greece. Their work, “Antiquities of Athens,” was published in 1762. One of the results of the interest it created was the acquisition through Lord Elgin of the bulk of the sculpture of the Parthenon and a caryatid and column from the Erechtheion which were purchased by the Government (1801-1803). These in turn prompted the researches of the architect, H. W. Inwood, who published in 1831 his study of the “Erechtheion.”