of great wealth and of considerable culture; a great collector of art treasures, and one who spent large sums in building in an ancient style of which neither he nor anyone living knew the rudiments. Reynolds, however, may be held to have countenanced the practice, for he says that the imagination being affected by the association of ideas, and we having naturally a veneration for antiquity, whatever building brings to our remembrance ancient customs and manners, such as the castles of the barons of ancient chivalry, is sure to give delight. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--KINGS WESTON, NEAR BRISTOL, _cir._ 1715.] [Illustration: FIG. 8.--WOLTERTON HALL, NORFOLK, 1736.] It is often very difficult to determine the date of old country houses; no records of the building of them survive, or if they do they are stowed away in unexplored muniment rooms. Tradition is vague or unreliable. Additions may have been made from time to time of which no precise account remains. The lapse of years may have toned everything down to the same antique appearance, rendering the disentanglement of the various periods a laborious task, and the results uncertain. The work of a later period may, perhaps, predominate to such an extent as to overwhelm what remains from an earlier, and cause the whole house to be dated half a century later than it ought to be. This is the case at Normanton Park, in Rutland, where such considerable alterations were made about 1780 that the house is held to be of the Adam period, whereas its main disposition was almost certainly settled fifty years before that time. Enough of the earlier work remains in various parts to support this idea, and to show that the plan adopted--that of a central block with detached wings connected by colonnades--was the production of the beginning of the century rather than of the end. At the later period, however, many of the external walls must have been recased if not rebuilt, and the garden front (Fig. 10) is a good example of the time. The circular bay is a characteristic feature, and so are the attic stories of the wings, although the placing of a plainly treated attic over a more majestic substructure was by no means a novelty. The real touch of the Adam period is to be found in the detail, which has all the delicacy and refinement connected with the name of the accomplished brothers Adam. That it is useless to argue about matters of taste is a dictum as old as the time when thoughts were usually expressed in the Latin tongue. Whether the delicacy of Adam or the vigour of Vanbrugh is to be preferred is a matter of individual liking. Some people admire Ganymede, others regard Hercules as a finer type; yet others admire both. With such predilections we need not be concerned; all that is necessary at present is to point out the change that had taken place in architectural treatment during the course of the eighteenth century. [Illustration: FIG. 9.--FONTHILL HOUSE, WILTSHIRE, _cir._ 1760.]