WELBECK. As every conspicuous building in a park should derive its character from that of the house, it is very essential to fix, with some precision, what that character ought to be; yet the various tastes of successive ages have so blended opposite styles of architecture, that it is often difficult, in an old house, to determine the date to which its true character belongs. I venture to deliver it as my opinion, that there are only two characters of buildings; the one may be called perpendicular, and the other horizontal. Under the first, I class all buildings erected in England before, and during the early part of, Queen Elizabeth's reign, whether deemed Saracenic, Saxon, Norman, or the Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and even that peculiar kind called Queen Elizabeth's Gothic, in which turrets prevailed, though battlements were discarded, and Grecian columns occasionally introduced. Under the horizontal character I include all edifices built since the introduction of a more regular architecture, whether it copies the remains of Grecian, or Roman models. There is, indeed a third kind, in which neither the horizontal nor perpendicular lines prevail, but which consists of a confused mixture of both: this is called CHINESE.
