Fashions in dress, in furniture, &c. are comparatively harmless; they soon pass away, and become ridiculous, in proportion to the distance of their dates. Thus we laugh at the odd figures of our ancestors on canvas, and wonder at the bad taste of old worm-eaten furniture, without reflecting that, in a few years, our own taste will become no less obsolete. But in the more lasting works of art, fashion should be guided by common sense, or we may perpetuate absurdities. Of this kind was the general rage for destroying those old English buildings called Gothic; and for introducing the architecture of a hot country, ill adapted to a cold one-as* the Grecian and Roman portico to the north front of an English house, or the Indian verandah as a shelter from the cold east winds of this climate.
