Rousham is on the west bank; Palladian in plan but
Gothic in eleva- tion, an odd example of the blend of two styles in total opposition. But a good limestone like the oolite will reconcile extremities of contrast, and the mansion would have made peace between them but. for the Victorian windows. Its greatest charm is its site on a flat mound facing the Cherwell, here like an Irish river with its wealth of meadow sweet and floating tresses of water-weed. The enceinte of gardens and park is the one complete masterpiece of William Kent surviving. Though he converted the Renaissance terraces into slopes edged with now patri- archal trees, he refrained, as that incorrigible planner, Capability Brown, would not have done, from destroying the lovely little geometric rose- garden of 1640 with its unbelievably thick box-hedges. The dormered dovecot with its exotic-looking blue-black pigeons and the little church near it resume the Gothic for which the oolite limestone seems created. But with perhaps the mediaeval ideal of courtesy in mind, the church graciously accepts a classical interior of carved Jacobean- pews. As for the park, with its antique statuary of Venus, Antiiyous, heroic wrestlers and the like, cascades in rustic frames, " Venus's Vale " and eyecatcher of a shim castle gateway at Steeple Aston, it would suggest more than a touch of Peacockian or Walpolian extravaganza—and indeed it pleased Horace Walpole's bizarre taste. Actually the late (1740) Kent lay-out of spacious and formal rides, the hint of Turneresque or Golden Age forest beyond them and the ha-ha hedge which smooths the transition between them, make a whole of striking beauty. At Rousham, Gothic, Palle- dian, neo-Gothic, the rococd and the formal are all gathered into harmony by the bold concept of one man. Kent's " Gothick " wings ind stables to the house are more satisfying than the house itself. The fascination of 18th-century Gothic proceeds, I am sure, frOm its pro- fotind ignorance of genuine Gothic, while the horror of Victorian Gothic proceeds from its thorough knowledge of the 13th century. The 19th century knew too much and co-pied like a pedantic dullard ; the 18th century knew just enough to free the imagination or at any rate the fancy to play with landscapes and architecture like a happy and inventive child. The whole point of 18th-century Gothic is that it is an original style.
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