It almost appears as if this style, which has its own peculiar beauties, had been adopted out of a national antagonism to the contemporary style in England. The Tudor architecture has always a horizontal tendency, spreading itself out in broad open screens or wall-plates, diversified by occasional angular eminences--as, for instance, in the tops of the decorated windows. But in the Gallo-Scottish style everything tends to the perpendicular, not only in the long, narrow shapes of the buildings themselves, and their tall, spiral turrets, but in the many decorations which incrust them. This decoration has an extremely rich look, from the quantity of breaks, and the absence of bare wall or long straight lines. Thus, to save the uniform plainness of the straight gable-line, it is broken into small gradations called 'crow-steps.' Every one who looks at old houses in Scotland must be familiar with this feature, and must have noticed its picturesqueness. It appears to have been derived from the Flemish houses, where, however, the steps or terraces are much larger, and not so effective, since, instead of merely breaking and enriching the line of the gable, they break it up, as it were, into separate pieces.
The Scottish style has not, indeed, slavishly adopted any foreign model. It is, as we have remarked, chiefly adopted from the French; but it has characteristics and beauties of its own. No one, we believe, had any conception of their extent and variety, until they were brought to light by the artistic labours of Mr Billings. In some instances, to bring out the full effect of the ornamental parts of these buildings without overloading his picture with the more cumbrous plain stone-work, he brings forward, by some artistic manoeuvre, the crest of the building, as if the spectator saw it from a scaffold or a balloon level with the highest storey. The effect of the rich Oriental-looking mass of decoration thus concentrated is extremely striking, and one is apt to ask, if it is possible that the country so often characterised as bare, cold, and impoverished, could have produced these gorgeous edifices. Their number and distribution through the most remote parts of the land are equally remarkable. Among Mr Billings's specimens, we have, in the southern part of Scotland, Pinkie, near Musselburgh; Auchans and Kelburn, in Ayrshire; Newark, on the Clyde; Airth and Argyle's Lodging, in Stirling. Going northward, we come to Elcho and Glammis, and to Muchalls and Crathes, in Kincardineshire. It is remarkable, that the further north we go, the French style becomes more conspicuous and complete. Many of the finest specimens are to be found in Aberdeenshire. Fyvie Castle, which was built for a Scottish chancellor--Seton, Earl of Dunfermline--is almost a complete French château of the sixteenth century, such as the traveller may have seen in sunny Guienne or Anjou; and there it stands transplanted, like an exotic, among the bleak hills of the north. It is only natural to find in connection with such a circumstance, that Seton received his education in France, and passed a considerable part of his life there. Whether from such an example or not, the Aberdeenshire lairds seem to have been all ambitious of possessing French châteaux; and thus in the county of primitive rock, where there is certainly little else to remind us of French habits or ideas, we have some admirable specimens of that foreign architectural school in Castle Fraser, Craigievar, Midmar, Tolquhon, Dalpersie, and Udny. Nearer Inverness, we have Balveny, Castle-Stewart, and Cawdor.