The house at the corner of Stratton Street, Piccadilly (Fig. 224), is typical of many of its contemporaries in London. It is plain to baldness, the most interesting things about it being the iron balustrades. This appears to be an early example of that method of designing which works on the supposition that the various faces of a building are as distinct in execution as they are on the drawings, and that a rich treatment of the front need not be continued along the side, nor even find an echo there, although the side is equally visible. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a much plainer and duller type of house was in vogue than had been the case at the beginning of the eighteenth. The trend of design had been always in this direction, always towards a more severe treatment. This severity was endurable in large buildings where variety could be obtained by a skilful grouping of the masses, but in rows of small houses, or even in small detached houses, it resulted in a baldness that can only rouse admiration when other means of enjoyment are exhausted. Tennyson’s “long unlovely” street consisted of buildings thus plainly treated. Another cause of this lack of interest was the erection of houses by speculative builders and owners. Such houses had of necessity to be cheap, and where cheapness is the first consideration the amenities of design are generally the last. Design indeed had lost itself; the traditions which had been its guides were worn out; in looking for help it appealed for a time to Greece, and with its assistance planted a copy of the Temple of Erectheus in St Pancras and of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Regent Street. Upon many a country garden it bestowed a Grecian temple, set amid winding shrubberies, towards which some heroine of Jane Austen would steal to indulge her love-sick fancies. Such pagan architecture eventually roused protests in this Christian country, and Pugin initiated the Gothic revival. But the consideration of this development is beyond our present scope, and it is only mentioned in order to show how completely design had lost its way. Its last effort in the old paths was to cover in part the plain front of a small house with a verandah enclosed by trellis-work, in which originality is still to be found. There is a good example in Finsbury Circus (Fig. 225), which was built about 1814. Others may be found in Kennington Park Road (Figs. 226, 227), somewhat more elaborate in treatment. Kennington Park was at that time a common, and was the place where malefactors from this part of Surrey expiated their crimes on the gallows. The progress of civilisation has not only reduced the number of crimes for which the penalty was paid on Kennington Common, but has withdrawn the last scene from public gaze. Doubtless, however, balconies such as these were often crowded by persons eager to watch the irrevocable punishment of offences now adequately purged by a few months’ imprisonment.