Henry, Earl of Pembroke, according to Walpole, was another of the “men of the first rank who contributed to embellish their country by buildings of their own design in the purest style of antique composition.” William, Earl Fitzwilliam, designed a new front to Wentworth Castle; General Conway erected a rustic bridge, of which every stone was placed by his own direction; but from a reference in one of Walpole’s letters to George Montagu, it was hardly a piece of architecture, but rather a mere piling up of large stones; this, however, the writer regarded as much superior to a regular Palladian structure. Mr Chute, at his seat of the Vyne, in Hampshire, designed and erected a theatric staircase. Dean Aldrich and Dr Clarke at Oxford, and Sir James Burroughs at Cambridge, were also amateurs, but they appear to have had more claim as designers than some of those whom Walpole extols. The amateur architect of the eighteenth century had, indeed, a long and even illustrious ancestry. Already in Charles II.’s reign Sir John Denham, a poet, had been surveyor of the works to the King. Wren, who succeeded him, was himself an amateur, in the sense that he received no early training in architecture, and that his reputation as a scientist was fully established before he turned his attention to art. But Wren was a man of exceptional genius and capacity, and soon mastered the technicalities of his new calling. Sir John Vanbrugh was a poet before he was an architect, yet to him we owe houses of the first importance, such as Blenheim and Castle Howard. Besides these amateurs there were men who had received a definite training as architects, John Webb, the nephew and son-in-law of Inigo Jones; Nicholas Hawksmoor, the assistant of Wren; James Gibbs; Colin Campbell; Thomas Ripley, of whom Walpole says that “in the mechanic part, and in the disposition of apartments and conveniences,” he was superior to Lord Burlington himself; and William Kent, the protégé and friend of the same munificent and gifted nobleman. But even among these professional architects the amateur spirit prevailed, and their clients had to adapt themselves to the houses provided for them, instead of the houses being adapted to the wants of the clients.