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What were these winds, and what effect did they have upon the architecture of the time?

Most of the influences that came by way of trade affected only the accent of architecture; the language remained a homely vernacular. In the middle of the eighteenth century China sent over wallpaper; and in the Metropolitan Museum there is an American lacquered cabinet dated as early as 1700, decorated with obscure little Chinese figures in gilded gesso. “China” itself came in to take the place of pewter and earthenware in the finer houses; while in the gardens of the great manors, pavilions and pagodas, done more or less in the Chinese manner, were fashionable. Even Thomas Jefferson, with his impeccably classical taste, designed such a pavilion for Monticello before the Revolution.

This specific Chinese influence was part of that large, eclectic Oriental influence of the eighteenth century. The cultural spirit that produced Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes also led to the translation of the Chinese and Persian and Sanskrit classics, and by a more direct route brought home Turkish dressing-gowns, turbans, and slippers to Boston merchants. In Copley’s painting of Nicholas Boylston, in 1767, these Turkish ornaments rise comically against the suggestion of a Corinthian pillar in the background; and this pillar recalls to us the principal influence of the time—that of classic civilization. This influence entered America first as a motif in decoration, and passed out only after it had become a dominating motive in life.