Of course, these Colonial houses are Renaissance, because Renaissance, since Mediæval times, has been the connecting link history has found convenient to unite the present with the past. Yet there is not a building in either England or France or Italy like any of them. They are intensely American in every line, and express as much American history as George Bancroft was able to express in his great literary work. Architecture is not architecture which does not express history. St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is strictly Renaissance, yet who shall say it is not _original_, that it is not _English_ Renaissance, and architecture above everything? The Renaissance of America has as much if not more local color than that of Great Britain. And I do not believe there is an architectural scholar in the country who would have the hardihood to declare the vast treasure house of English Renaissance to be a weak imitation of an older school. No, I cannot clearly make out what the promoters of the newly invented modes of building expect to teach us. There are two lines of poetry wholly irrelevant to architecture, but so irresistibly significant of the propositions of “New Art” in all its guises, that I may not do better than append them here, to wit: “He might be taught by love[3] and her together-- I really don’t know what, nor Julia either.” _Don Juan, Canto I, LXXXI._ PLATE XXXVIII. [Illustration: DE WOLF-COLT MANSION, BRISTOL, R. I. EPOCH 1810.] CHAPTER VI EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY WORK To the brief but brilliant interregnum lasting from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the year 1825 we are indebted for some excellent domestic architecture. The end of the ancient régime in America, at least up to the war with Great Britain in 1812, was marked by a healthy and material progress which seems to have encouraged domestic architecture before everything. It presents no phases in common with that ancient régime in France from which we borrow the title. With us it was not a case of Du Barry and revolution; for the last remnant of America’s aristocracy passed away amid the pleasantest of surroundings, the only regret being that our gentry failed to bequeath to their children those rare qualities of eminent nobility which they themselves enjoyed to such perfection, and which are so charmingly indicated by the houses they erected--the houses they could not make out to take with them, to which it is still our privilege to pay visits and respects.