“He made immense sums out of his works and his contracts, and all else that concerned his buildings, of which he was absolute master, and with such authority that not a workman, contractor or person about the buildings would have dared speak or make the slightest fuss. As he had no taste, or the king either, he never executed anything fine, nor even convenient for the vast expenses he incurred.” The episode about his bridge at Moulins that floated down the river to Nantes is excruciatingly funny as told by Saint-Simon, but I must not appropriate the space necessary for its relation. I cannot think, however, that the damage of an occasional Hardouin Mansart in France or a Mr. Pecksniff, I may say, in England, to the architecture of either country has been anything like as great as that done American Renaissance by their numerous colleagues upon this side of the water. That our modern architecture is as good as it is, is no less than remarkable, considering, too, how we are always trying to make it pay financially. And when at last there comes a scintillating opportunity where an architect is no longer obliged to turn out a rent-trap, a manufacturing plant, or something else that will pay a given percentage upon the investment, as happens in the case of a large country house, the marks of our national trade are very apt to obtrude themselves in a hundred amusing ways. The commercial habit cannot be relinquished in a moment, and thus, unconsciously, we betray ourselves. Of the modern country seats of America, I should select Biltmore (see Plate XCII), in the North Carolina mountains--the masterpiece of Richard Morris Hunt--as standing first and foremost at the time I write. It is one of the very few examples of domestic architecture we have that can be compared with the historic castles of England to which I have referred and we are accustomed to seeing illustrated so beautifully in _Country Life_. We call Biltmore French Renaissance now; it will be American Renaissance later on. No other of Mr. Hunt’s designs can begin to equal it. You may observe that Ochre Court at Newport has a fine elevation to the sea. It is true. But the place is much marred by an overgrown servants’ wing, while the notorious Marble-house appears to have been created under pressure when the artist was overworked, for it has neither his inspiration nor individuality, merely representing several thousand cubic feet of classic architecture which would serve to better advantage for a plate in a text-book. But at Biltmore, we have an original design with the necessary attributes--attributes which I need not take the trouble to enumerate again, having been so particular about the reader’s making their acquaintance in the other chapters.