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THE GOTHIC TEMPLE, &c.
315

on her first visit to her adopted residence. The Evergreen Mount, as she then called it, soon became a favourite and favoured spot—she visited it often, and was daily more and more enamoured of its charms. Her Royal Highness, therefore, resolved to erect on this spot a small building that should supply an agreeable retreat at all seasons, during her retirement with the prince her husband from the busy scenes of public life.

The resolution was made with the ardour of youth, gaily anticipating the delights of social intercourse, of friendly confidence and affectionate seclusion, to be enjoyed there, and perhaps already picturing the "mother's holidays," when the anxious promise should be realized, and she should there watch the daily development of her infant's mind, and instruct its genius to fulfil the important objects of its destiny.

The building was immediately begun, and in the Gothic style—this being admirably suited to the surrounding accompaniments; and as the Princess observed, "because it was the architecture of her country."[1] The plan of the building is an irregular octagon with wing-recesses on its two longest sides, so that it forms an octagonal centre, the pinnacles of which

  1. ↑ Custom has given a foreign name to this architecture—but it is truly our national property and a British art.
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