“Through the inability of his architects, particularly of Langley (who, though esteemed capital in his day, knew nothing of the art of constructing modern Gothic), his ideas were never properly executed. Mr. Walpole often complained they were rather Moorish than Gothic; however he could not at that day procure better assistance. He was always, however, among the first to depreciate his own architecture.” Mrs. Delany’s letters afford evidence of the prevailing Gothic taste. In 1754, we hear: “I am working stools in worsted chenille for the Gothic cell.” In 1756, she mentions a great Gothic hall in her description of Lady Oxford’s house. She also says: “The chapel is to be new built in the same taste; the alterations Lady Oxford made in this place cost above 40,000 pounds, and her apartment is the prettiest thing I ever saw, consisting of a skylight antechamber or vestibule, adorned in the Gothic way. The rooms that encompass it are a library, a dressing-room, a room fitted up with china and Japan of the rarest kinds, and a Gothic room full of charming pictures, and embellished with everything that can make it look gay and pleasant; it is lighted by a window something of the Venetian kind, but prettier, and the whole breadth of one side of the room.” Then, in 1758: “My closet is just hung with crimson paper, a small pattern that looks like velvet; as soon as dry, I shall put up my pictures; and I am going to make a wreath to go round the circular window in the chapel, of oak branches, vines and corn; the benches for the servants are fixed, the _chairs_ for the upper part of the chapel are a whim of mine, but I am not sure till I see a pattern chair that I shall like it; it is to be in the shape and ornamented like a Gothic arch.”