+CLASSIC PERIOD.+ If the classic style was late in its appearance in England, its final sway was complete and long-lasting. It was _Inigo Jones_ (1572-1652) who first introduced the correct and monumental style of the Italian masters of classic design. For Palladio, indeed, he seems to have entertained a sort of veneration, and the villa which he designed at Chiswick was a reduced copy of Palladio’s Villa Capra, near Vicenza. This and other works of his show a failure to appreciate the unsuitability of Italian conceptions to the climate and tastes of Great Britain; his efforts to popularize Palladian architecture, without the resources which Palladio controlled in the way of decorative sculpture and painting, were consequently not always happy in their results. His greatest work was the design for a new +Palace at Whitehall+, London. Of this colossal scheme, which, if completed, would have ranked as the grandest palace of the time, only the +Banqueting Hall+ (now used as a museum) was ever built (Fig. 185). It is an effective composition in two stories, rusticated throughout and adorned with columns and pilasters, and contains a fine vaulted hall in three aisles. The plan of the palace, which was to have measured 1,152 × 720 feet, was excellent, largely conceived and carefully studied in its details, but it was wholly beyond the resources of the kingdom. The garden-front of +Somerset House+ (1632; demolished) had the same qualities of simplicity and dignity, recalling the works of Sammichele. Wilton House, Coleshill, the Villa at Chiswick, and St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, are the best known of his works, showing him to have been a designer of ability, but hardly of the consummate genius which his admirers attribute to him. [Illustration: FIG. 185.--BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL.] [Illustration: FIG. 186.--PLAN OF ST. PAUL’S, LONDON.]