There are even of Queen Anne’s reign many excellent specimens of town architecture in remote villages of Cheshire and Shropshire. Mr. Norman Shaw has brought this late classic architecture again into deserved repute, and quite a new work might be published of the details of them,--the well-considered mouldings, the wreaths, and chimney-pieces. Many of these houses were inhabited even in the present century by courtly--perhaps somewhat formal--gentlemen, and now they are turned into boarding-schools or village tenements. Railways, of course, have rapidly and completely changed the scene. The old moralist in Thackeray laments the change of times, when a man of quality used to enter London, or return to his country house, in a coach and pair, with outriders, and now his son “slinks” from the station in a brougham. In speaking of the change that came over the architecture of England in the Elizabethan age, when Italian forms superseded the indigenous ones, it is not for a moment meant that the change was for the better. There was an incessant craving for foreign importation, which was a subject of satire among the writers of those days. Portia says, in the _Merchant of Venice_, when speaking of her English suitor, “I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.” No, the change to Italian architecture was not for the better. It is true that picturesqueness was not stamped out of the genius of England, and so a number of the buildings that were put up until the reign of George the Second were shapely and often noble; indeed the classic style has a breadth about it, no doubt, that makes it safe for modern architects to deal with, especially in country houses. Of course the formal rows of windows, if the house is a very large one, are a serious matter to deal with, as far as the plan is concerned. A satirist of the French school complained that in the new Palace at Versailles a large window, under pompous architraves on the outside, had to light a footman’s closet and a back staircase, a partition inside making an awkward division between the two. Still a broad classic front surrounded by elms has a stately appearance; and perhaps in certain situations, like the margin of a Westmoreland lake, might seem peculiarly well adapted to the wants of the landscape. Too often a Gothic house among trees, if of recent erection, is a mass of confusion; the chimneys and gables do not stand out clearly from each other, and breadth is entirely lost; while the architect who designed it might have safely trusted himself to an Italian façade. A thoroughly fine front, like Compton Wynyates, Hadden, or even Trevallyan Hall in the charming vale of Gresford--where every part tells, and stands out, and where, notwithstanding its many angles, breadth is preserved--is perfection in a British landscape. There are, of course, architects of the present day