The architecture of the house itself clearly indicates the taste and training of its builder.  Vanbrugh shared the enthusiasm of the day for classical work, as understood and developed, whether well or ill, by the Italians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but with characteristic disregard of law, he thought to combine classical severity with the fancifulness natural in a northerner and a playwright.  Thus, while the general scheme of the south front, for instance, is distinctly severe, the massive towers at its ends are surmounted by fantastic masses of open stone-work, most quaintly finished off with arrangements of cannon-balls and coronets.  Throughout he repeatedly made use of classical members with strange disregard to their structural intention.  Silvester, the French artist employed to make designs for the decoration of the salon, sniffed contemptuously at Vanbrugh’s Gothic tendencies.  “I can not approve of that double line of niches.  It suggests the facade of a Gothic church.”  And then with savage delight he announced his discovery that much of the design was merely an unintelligent imitation of the Palazzo Farnese at Florence.

Certainly, in spite of Vanbrugh’s attempt to achieve at once dignity and lightness, the probable impression made by the building on the casual observer is, that it is ponderous without being stately, and irregular without being tasteful.  But the final feeling of any one whose fate it is to study it at leisure will assuredly be one of respect, even of enthusiasm, for the ability of Vanbrugh.  It takes time to realize the boldness of the general design and the solidity of the masonry.  In many parts there are about as many feet of solid stone as a modern architect would put inches of lath and plaster.  The negative qualities of integrity and thoroughness are rare enough in work of the present day, now that the architect has delegated to the contractor the execution of his design.

The interior proportions of the rooms are generally admirable, and so perfectly was the work carried out that it is possible to look through the keyholes of ten doors, and see daylight at the end, over three hundred feet off.  It is noticeable, further, that the whole was designed by a single man, there being no subsequent additions, as there are, for instance, at Chatsworth and Wentworth.  Vanbrugh is responsible for good and bad qualities alike.  One would imagine a priori that he had everything in his favor—­unlimited money and a free hand.  Far from this being the case, the stupendous work was accomplished under difficulties greater than any long-suffering architect ever had to contend with.