both in its taste and its decorations. If we look at some of the
restorations of our churches of the beginning of the eighteenth
century , we shall find them a most barbarous mixture of Gothic
forms and Grecian and Roman ornaments. Such are the western
towers of Westminster Abbey, designed by Wren; the attempts at
Gothic, by the same architect, in one or two of his City
churches; Gibbs's quadrangle of All Souls' College, Oxford; and
the buildings in the same style of Kent, Batty, Langley, etc. To
these Strawberry is greatly superior: and it must be observed,
that Walpole himself, in his progressive building, went on
improving and purifying his taste. Thus the gallery and
round-tower at Strawberry Hill, which were among his latest
works, are incomparably the best part of the house; and in their
interior decorations there is very little to be objected to, and
much to be admired.

It were to be wished, indeed, that Walpole's haste to finish, to
which he alludes in the letter just quoted, and perhaps also, in
some degree, economy, had not made him build his castle, which,
with all its faults, is a curious relic of a clever and ingenious
man, with so little solidity, that it is almost already in a
state of decay. Lath and plaster, and wood, appear to have been
his favourite materials for construction; which made his friend
Williams (36) say of him, towards the end of his life, "that he
had outlived three sets of his own battlements." It is somewhat
curious, as a proof of the inconsistency of the human mind, that,
having built his castle with so little view to durability,
Walpole entailed the perishable possession with a degree of
strictness, which would have been more fitting for a baronial
estate. And that, too, after having written a fable entitled