or no injury or difcolouring either from the effects of weather or wear, of carriage or dirt; which, in the fourth place, nowife irretrievably cohering with the body of the object, on whofe furface they are fituated, may, either on a renewal or a change of habitation, be taken off things become useless or decayed, however long they have adhered to the fame, and be applied to new objects; and which, finally, on a defire to increase the richness of their appearance, may, however long they have served in their green and naked state, still assume a richer garb, be gilt and be burnished,-feem, in a country where fuel is lefs expenfive than hands, and where the atmofphere, charged with damp and with fmoke, is feldom pure, preferable to sculptured ornaments, whose original fabrication, in any quantities, is more expenfive; whofe texture is more brittle; whofe hue is more delicate; which, eafily difcoloured, and eafily broken, are difficult to clean, and more difficult to mend and which, laftly, never fufceptible of being fevered from the object to which they belong, muft follow its fate, and perish with the fame.' P. 29, 30.

Of the plates, and of the articles which they represent, we are of course unable to give our readers any clear ideas. Many of the objects, being exactly copied from the fine remains of ancient art, are unquestionably beautiful in themselves; but we must take the liberty to say, that we think them, for the most part, quite unsuitable for articles of household furniture, and to predict, that the fashion which Mr Hope may now succeed in introducing will not be much more permanent than those which it has supplanted. We say so for a great variety of reasons; some of which we shall shortly run over.

In the first place, the articles are in general too bulky, massive, and ponderous, to be commodious for general use. There are arm chairs, whose cold hollow square would contain a woolsack, and couches which could not be moved by a dozen of Irish chairmen. A considerable number of articles of this kind, are copied from antient monuments in marble. But Mr Hope should have known, that sculpture requires a mass and breadth in its representations, which must be extremely inconvenient, and therefore unbecoming, in utensils of ordinary use. In things which are of real, frequent, and essential use, the chief source of beauty will always be the visible sign of utility; and any quality which obviously interferes with that, must produce the effect of deformity. Now, in chairs, tables, footstools, &c. it is a substantial part of their convenience, to be easily moved; and accordingly, the improving luxury of the age, has gone on to make them lighter and lighter for the greater part of a century. Mr Hope, however, is a great advocate for solidity; and has produced such an assemblage of squared timber, and massive brass, as would weigh down the floor and crush out the walls of au

ordinary

ordinary London house. Let any one look at the chairs in the Egyptian room, (pl. 8.), or at that in plate 22. with their enor mous pediments, friezes, and massive bronze ornaments, and say whether it be possible for such things to come into use as ar ticles of furniture, till aldermen wear armour, and take their afternoon naps in Guildhall.

In the second place, we object to the whole scheme and system of embellishment, as being affected, pedantic and unnatural in the very highest degree. Every thing is to be adorned, ac cording to Mr Hope, with emblems and symbols connected with the uses to which it is applied, and all these emblems are to be derived from classical mythology! We can scarcely conceive any conceit more miserably poor, cold and shallow than this. After having banished the heathen gods and their attributes pretty well from our poetry, we are to introduce them habitually into our eating-rooms, nurseries and staircases; and, in the course of our daily business and domestic life, to set constantly before us a chaos of symbols and effigies which no man can interpret whơ has not the whole Pantheon at his finger ends! We should expect something like this taste in the vestibule of an academical museum, or in the dwelling of a fantastic usher of a grammarschool; but we should be very sorry to see it supersede every other in the metropolis of a great and manly and polished people. Is there any other grown Englishman who would choose to speak of his furniture in this jargon? Describing an organ, for in

stance

The car of the god of mufic, of Apollo, glides over the centre of the pediment. The tripods, facred to this deity, furmount the angles. Laurel wreaths and other emblems, belonging to the fon of Latona, appear embroidered on the drapery, which, in the form of an ancient peplum or veil, defcends over the pipes of the inftrument, and gives it the appearance of a fanctuary.' p. 22.

He afterwards says of a sideboard, "It is adorned with em'blems of Bacchus and of Ceres. Cellaret ornamented with amphore and with figures allusive to the liquid element. To the right, a sloping altar surmounted by a vase. On the table,

< a vase with Bacchanalian marks,' &c.; and, in the same taste we meet with a mantle-piece surmounted with two Mythriac figures, and the heads of Vesta and Vulcan, emblematic of the worship of fire-a stand for ewer and bason with sea monsters, and other aquatic emblems round the frieze-bedsteads ornamented with figures of Night rising on her crescent and spreading her poppies,' &c. &c.

We have already said, that the constant recurrence of those emblems which are not naturally expressive of any thing, and are only significant of course to the professed antiquary, must give

a pedantic and affected air to any mansion of which they formed the sole decorations. But, in the third place, we would object to Mr Hope's peculiar manner of grouping and combining them, as being beyond all former example artificial and offensive. He has made a perfect hieroglyphic or enigma of most of his apartments by this means; and produced something so childishly complicated and fantastic as to be impenetrable without a paraphrase, and ridiculous when it is interpreted. As a specimen we give his description of plate 7.

The central object in this room is a fine marble group, executed by Mr Flaxman, and representing Aurora visiting Cephalus on Mount Ida. The whole furrounding decoration has been rendered, in fome degree, analogous to these personages, and to the face of nature at the moment when the first of the two, the goddess of the morn, is supposed to announce approaching day. Round the bottom of the room ftill reign the emblems of night. In the rail of a black marble table are introduced medallions of the god of fleep and of the goddess of night. The bird confecrated to the latter deity perches on the pillars of a black marble chimneypiece, whose broad frieze is ftudded with golden stars.. The fides of the room display, in fatin curtains, draped in ample folds over pannels of looking-glafs, and edged with black velvet, the fiery hue which fringes the clouds juft before funrife: and in a ceiling of cooler sky blue are fown, amidst a few still unextinguished luminaries of the night, the roses which the harbinger of day, in her courfe, fpreads on every fide around her.

The pedestal of the group offers the torches, the garlands, the wreaths, and the other infignia belonging to the miftrefs of Cephalus, difpofed around the fatal dart of which he made her lover a prefent. The broad band which girds the top of the room, contains medallions of the ruddy goddess and of the Phrygian youth, intermixed with the inftruments and the emblems of the chase, his favourite amusement. Fi gures of the youthful hours, adorned with wreaths of foliage, adorn part of the furniture, which is chiefly gilt, in order to give more relief to the azure, the black, and the orange compartments of the hangings. ' p. 25, 26.

Would any one desire a more exquisite representation of the Dawn? Satin curtains with black velvet binding!—a marble table with a rail !-a black chimney-piece and guilt furniture!

We do not know any thing at all parallel to this-but the ingenious personification of Moonshine, and a rough-cast Wall in the lamentable tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe; -and earnestly hope that we may be defended from seeing Mr Hope's chamber copied in any other dwelling, till our dramatists revive those magnificent personages.

In the last place, we object to Mr Hope's system of embellishment, because it is, in a thousand instances, incongruous and and inconsistent

inconsistent with the very principle which he has himself laid down. That principle, if through the glare of his diction we have been able to discover it, is, that every object should have an appropriate ornament, and that all its decorations should bear reference to its uses, and to each other. Now, though, in the instances already quoted, and in some others, a melancholy attempt is made to preserve this pedantic congruity, it is obviously and entirely abandoned in the far greater number of the articles with which we are here presented in illustration of it. Why, for instance, should a chair be in the shape of a lyre,-or of two antique swords, -or have a ram's head on the arm, and a bronze pine on the top of the corner? By virtue of what analogy is a griffin or a chimæra introduced to support a dressing table?-or what has a lion's head to do on the pediment of a sofa, and a man's bust on the corner? Can Mr Hope give any very good reason why a winecooler should be made in the shape of an ancient bath,-why a sloping altar should be placed by the end of a sideboard,—why a fireplace should be made, in one instance, in the form of a façade to a sepulchral chamber, and in another in that of an Egyptian portico, or finally, why a fire screen should have the form of a Roman shield, and be adorned with the fulmen of Jupiter? All meaning and propriety is plainly lost sight of in those and innumerable other instances. But the most ludicrous of the whole, is that, in which two horses' heads are made to project from the mantle-piece of an eating room, for this very satisfactory reason,-that there is a bust in the centre inscribed with the name of Philip;- -which name, in Greek, the unlearned reader will please to be informed, signifies a lover of horses!-This is about the most pitiful attempt at a pun in sculpture that we ever recollect to have met with. The lion tearing the cocks at Blenheim is not half so bad: nor do we believe that any thing more would be necessary to discredit this whole collection, along with the system and the taste of its author, than merely to mention, that, in pursuance of his grand project for imparting significance, harmony and intellect to the decorations of our houses, he had brought two horses to his parlour fireside, because he had a bust of Philip on the mantle-piece! There is a similar attempt at a pun in ornamenting a lamp with a wreath of nightshade; and, for any thing we know, there may be a more interesting and ingenious allusion of the same sort in the decoration of a cradle with emblems of Dreams, Night, and-Hope.

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