They are not buildings; for you can scarcely say a thing is built where every measurement is in clamant disproportion with its neighbour.

They belong to no style of art, only to a form of business much to be regretted.
Why should it be cheaper to erect a structure where the size of the windows bears no rational relation to the size of the front?
Is there any profit in a misplaced chimney-stalk?
Does a hard-working, greedy builder gain more on a monstrosity than on a decent cottage of equal plainness?
Frankly, we should say, No.

Bricks may be omitted, and green timber employed, in the construction of even a very elegant design; and there is no reason why a chimney should be made to vent, because it is so situated as to look comely from without.

On the other hand, there is a noble way of being ugly: a high-aspiring fiasco like the fall of Lucifer.
There are daring and gaudy buildings that manage to be offensive, without being contemptible; and we know that 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' But to aim at making a common-place villa, and to make it insufferably ugly in each particular; to attempt the homeliest achievement, and to attain the bottom of derided failure; not to have any theory but profit and yet, at an equal expense, to outstrip all competitors in the art of conceiving and rendering permanent deformity; and to do all this in what is, by nature, one of the most agreeable neighbourhoods in Britain:--what are we to say, but that this also is a distinction, hard to earn although not greatly worshipful?
Indifferent buildings give pain to the sensitive; but these things offend the plainest taste.

It is a danger which threatens the amenity of the town; and as this eruption keeps spreading on our borders, we have ever the farther to walk among unpleasant sights, before we gain the country air.