"The Entail," in consequence, of some one having asked him
whether he did not intend to entail Strawberry Hill, and in
ridicule of such a proceeding.

Whether Horace Walpole conferred a benefit upon the public by
setting the fashion of applying the Gothic style of architecture
to domestic purposes, may be doubtful; so greatly has the example
he gave been abused in practice since. But, at all events, he
thus led the professors of architecture to study with accuracy
the principles of the art, which has occasioned the restoration
and preservation in such an admirable manner of so many of our
finest cathedrals. colleges, and ancient Gothic and conventual
buildings. This, it must be at least allowed, was the fortunate
result of the rage for Gothic, which succeeded the building of
Strawberry Hill. For a good many years after that event, every
new building was pinnacled and turreted on all sides, however
little its situation, its size, or its uses might seem to fit it
for such ornaments. Then, as fashion is never constant for any
great length of' time, the taste of the public rushed at once
upon castles; and loopholes, and battlements, and heavy arches,
and buttresses appeared in every direction. Now the fancy of the
time has turned as madly to that bastard kind of architecture,
possessing, however, many beauties, which compounded of the
Gothic, Castellated, and Grecian or Roman, is called the
Elizabethan, or Old English. No villa, no country-house, no
lodge in the outskirts of London, no box of a retired tradesman
is now built, except in some modification of this style. The
most ludicrous situations and the most inappropriate destinations
do not deter any one from pointing his gables, and squaring his
bay-windows, in the most approved Elizabethan manner. And this