parent of my former Rock Park home and of innumerable of the latter's
kindred. Strawberry Hill is sprawling and vast, the progeny are
liliputian, but the family likeness is striking. The idea is to build
something which shall seem to be all that it is not. The gray-white
stucco pretends to be stone, and the lines of the stone courses are
carefully painted on the roughened surface; but nobody, since Horace's
time, could ever have been deceived by them. The castellated additions
and ornamentation are all bogus, of the cheapest and vulgarest sort.
It is singular that a people so sincere and solid as the English are
supposed to be should adopt this fashion for their dwellings. But then
they are used to follow conventions and adopt fashions set them by
those whom they esteem to be their betters, without thought, or
activity of individual conscience. It is rather matter for wonder,
remembering what rascals and humbugs many of their "betters" have
been, that middle-class England is not more of a whited sepulchre than
it is. I do not mean to cast any reflections upon the admirable and
beguiling Horace; but he was a highly civilized person, and had a
brother named Robert, and perhaps solid sincerity should not be
expected from such a combination.

Our villa, within, was close and comfortable enough, for its era and
degree; but the furniture was ponderous and ugly to the point of
nightmare. The chairs, tables, and sofas wore the semblance of solid
mahogany, twisted and tortured in a futile struggle to achieve
elegance; the carvings, or mouldings, were screwed or glued on, and
the lines of structure, intended to charm the eye, accomplished only
the discomfort of the body. The dining-table was like a plateau; the
sideboard resembled a cliff-dwelling. The carpets were of the Brussels
ilk: acanthus-leaves and roses and dahlias wreathed in inextricable
convolutions, glowing with the brightest and most uncompromising hues.