Like Chippendale, they claimed more originality than they were entitled to when they wrote in their preface: “We have not trod in the path of others, nor derived aid from their labours. In the books which we have had the honour to execute we have not only met with the approbation of our employers, but even with the imitation of other artists, to such a degree, as in some measure to have brought about in this country, a kind of revolution in the whole system of this useful and elegant art. These circumstances induced us to hope that to collect and engrave our works would afford both entertainment and instruction.” They paid much attention to colour, and remark: “We have thought it proper to colour with the tints used in the execution, a few copies of each number, not only that posterity might be enabled to judge with more accuracy concerning the taste of the present age, and that foreign connoisseurs might have it in their power to indulge their curiosity with respect to our national style of ornament; but that the public in general might have an opportunity of cultivating the beautiful art of decoration hitherto so little understood in most of the countries of Europe.” The Adams tell us they intended to prefix to their book a dissertation regarding the rise and progress of architecture in Great Britain, “to have pointed out the various stages of its improvements from the time that our ancestors relinquishing the Gothic style, began to aim at an imitation of the Grecian manner, until it attained that degree of perfection at which it has now arrived.” Thus the Gothic had no more admiration from the Adams than it had when Evelyn denounced it. It is interesting to let them exhibit their own taste and rating of British architects.