In 1742, Langley published his _Gothic Architecture_. He says it is “restored and improved by a great variety of grand and useful designs entirely new in the Gothic Mode for the ornamenting of buildings and gardens exceeding everything that’s extant.” The subscribers to this work included eighty-one of the nobility, two bishops, nine judges, two ladies of title, sixteen gentlemen, three carpenters, one smith and one mason. This list shows that it was already fashionable to take interest in “Gothic.” Horace Walpole was one of the subscribers, but the claim made for him of having originated revived interest in Gothic architecture is disposed of by the fact that he was not yet in possession of _Strawberry Hill_, and it was not till 1750 that he wrote: “I am going to build a little Gothic castle.” In fact, in 1756, Isaac Ware calls it a “late taste” and implies that it is already on the wane. He writes: “The Gothic is distinguished from the antique architecture by its ornaments being whimsical and its profiles incorrect. The inventors of it probably thought they exceeded the Grecian method, and some of late have seemed, by their fondness for Gothic edifices, to be of the same opinion; but this was but a caprice, and, to the credit of our taste, is going out of fashion again as hastily as it came in.... The error of the late taste has been in attempting to bring the Gothic into use in smaller buildings, in which it can never look well.” The Englishmen of taste had adopted the French fondness for ruins in decoration, and real and artificial ruins in their gardens. It is said that some even dismantled their castles to have respectable ruins of their own. In Langley’s _Principles of Gardening_, published in 1728, this taste is catered to. Among his plates is “an avenue in perspective, terminated with the ruins of an ancient building after the Roman manner”; and eight plates are devoted to “views of ruins after the old Roman manner for the termination of walks, avenues, etc.” These ruins, some of which are of a false Gothic style, are to adorn “such walks that end in disagreeable objects,” and “may either be painted upon canvas, or actually built in that manner with brick, and covered with plastering in imitation of stone.” We get a faint hint of the rococo also from the following advice: “When figures of shell-work are erected in the midst of fountains, we receive a double pleasure of a fountain and cascade also by the waters agreeably murmuring down the rocky shells.” Langley was far more responsible for the “Gothic” craze than Walpole was. Besides writing books on the subject, his services were engaged by the latter, doubtless on account of his being the authority of the day on that subject. Walpole’s good sense, however, soon taught him dissatisfaction. When we look at the Gothic chimney-pieces and other features that adorned the rooms of Strawberry Hill, we cannot wonder at his dissatisfaction. We learn from the _Gentleman’s Magazine_: