COUNTRY HOUSES.
He that alters an old house is tied as a translator to the original, and is confined to the fancy of the first builder. Such a man were unwise to pluck down good old buildings, to erect, perchance, worse new. But those that raze a new house from the ground are blameworthy if they make it not handsome, seeing, to them, method and confusion are both at a rate. In building, we must respect situation, contrivance, receipt, strength, and beauty. Of situation:
Chiefly choose a wholesome air. For air is a dish one feeds on every minute, and therefore it need be good. Wherefore great men (who may build where they please, as poor men where they can), if herein they prefer their profit above their health, I refer them to their physicians to make them pay for it accordingly.
Wood and water are two staple commodities, where they may be had. The former, I confess, hath made so much iron, that it must now be bought with the more silver, and grows daily dearer. But it is as well pleasant as profitable to see a house cased with trees, like that of Anchises, in Troy,
“——quanquam secreta parentis
Anchisæ domus arboribusque obtecta recessit.”
The worst is, where a place is bald of wood, no art can make it a periwig. As for water, begin with Pindar’s beginning, “ἄρισον μεὺ hύὁωρ.” The fort of Gogmagog Hill, nigh Cambridge, is counted impregnable, but for water; the mischief of many houses, where the servants must bring the water on their shoulders.
Next, a pleasant prospect is to be respected. A medley view (such as of water and land at Greenwich) best entertains the eye, refreshing the wearied beholder with exchange of objects. Yet I know a more profitable prospect, where the owner can only see his own land round about.
A fair entrance, with an easy ascent, gives a great grace to a building, where the hall is a preferment out of the court, the parlor out of the hall; not (as in some old buildings) where the doors are so low, pigmies must stoop, and the rooms so high that giants may stand upright. But now we are come to the contrivance:
Let not thy common rooms be several, nor thy several rooms be common. The hall (which is a pandocheum) ought to lie open, and so ought passages and stairs (provided that the whole house be not spent in paths); chambers and closets are to be private and retired.