Those who about twenty years ago passed by its grim portals might have wondered how this monastic air could have recommended itself to the English nobility, for it was to be noted that all the great houses in London, with an exception or two, preserved this air of hostile and barricaded exclusion. Long ago Sir William Chambers, the architect of Somerset House, after remarking how in Italy and France the gates of palaces are always of open ironwork, so as to allow the house within to be seen, added this pleasant criticism:-- “In London many of our noblemen’s palaces towards the street _look like convents_; nothing appears but a high wall, with one or two large gates, in which there is a hole for those who choose to go in or out, to creep through: if a coach arrives the wide gate is opened indeed, but this is an operation that requires time. Few in this city suspect that behind an old brick wall in Piccadilly there is one of the finest pieces of architecture in Europe.” Here he alludes to the well-known colonnade, which, on the conversion of the place to its present purposes, was carted away ignominiously to Battersea Park. It was a happy and original idea of the noble architect’s. For as he looked from the windows of his house, his nice artistic sense was offended by the blank space of the wall in which his gateway was pierced, and he filled it up with this imposing semicircular colonnade, which must have formed a stately and ennobling object for the eye to rest on. Horace Walpole gives this natural account of the surprise produced on its first introduction to him. “I had not only,” he says, “never seen it, but had never heard of it. I was invited to a ball at Burlington House; as I passed under the gate at night, it could not strike me. But at daybreak, looking out of the window to see the sun rise, I was surprised at the vision of the colonnade that fronted me. It seemed one of those edifices in fairy tales that are raised by genii in a night time.” Of another mansion planned by Lord Burlington, but since destroyed, Lord Chesterfield said in his lively way: “That to be sure he could not live in it, but intended to take the house over against it, to look at it.” This was as handsome a compliment as the sarcastic peer could offer. But there were other additions to be supplied to the scene. The house itself was flanked on each side with stately dependences joined to it by corridors, a system of arrangement to which the older architects were partial.