notice, except the care for finish and detail, which has been remarked as eminently characteristic of its author. The position of the door at one extremity of the street front was acknowledged by him to be a blemish, inconsistent with the symmetrical principle of his design, but forced upon him by considerations of convenience, and the very small frontage at his command. The grouping of the central windows on the garden front was also an innovation on the principle of the regular Italian front, but it was one of a totally different kind. It was thoroughly in accordance with the main idea of symmetry, while it gave life to that symmetry by the evidence of artistic design, and it should be added, that it is as successful and convenient, in relation to the internal arrangement, as it is graceful externally. It was noticed and approved of at once by all critics. The success of the design being undoubted, it naturally followed that its claims to originality were disputed. The garden front was acknowledged to be original and singularly beautiful, but the street front was asserted to be a mere copy of the Villa Pandolfini. On this point it may be better to quote the words of one in the highest degree competent to give an opinion. “The Pall Mall front has been characterized by superficial observers as a copy, with slight modifications, from Raffaelle’s Pandolfini Palace at Florence. One moment’s comparison of the two elevations will suffice to entirely dispel the idea. The Pandolfini Palace has, in common with the Travellers’ Club-house, only the accidents of being two-storied, having rusticated angles, and a doorway at the extreme right-hand of the ground-floor of the principal façade. In every other respect the dissimilarities are most striking; the proportions of the windows are about one-third narrower in the Travellers’ than they are in the Pandolfini; in the former they are Ionic on the first-floor and Doric on the ground-floor; while in the latter they are Corinthian on the first-floor, and have simply returned architraves and no order on the ground-floor. The four windows on the first-floor of the Florentine façade are surmounted with alternately angular and segmental pediments, and united by panels in the interspaces, and by horizontal members; while the five of the Pall Mall building are precisely uniform, and the wall is entirely free from panelling, and the running through of any one of the members forming or decorating the fenestration above the cill-level. One of the leading features in the Pandolfini is its deep plain frieze, adorned only with a simple classic-looking inscription; while in the entablature of the Travellers’ Club the frieze is reduced to so small a proportion, and is so highly carved, as in fact to do duty rather as an enriched member of the cornice, than as a distinctive frieze at all.”[41]