rally be two stories of bedrooms above, but this would vary in different portions, with the design of the house. A certain proportion of the rooms on the first floor, (and possibly on the ground-floor also,) should be arranged in groups, so that visitors of one family might be lodged together; each of such groups having a boudoir attached to it, and, of course, having its own. arrangements complete in other ways. The apartments occupied by the lord and lady of the house should receive special attention, and should be replete with everything conducive to comfort and convenience.

There are two important apartments which I have not yet noticed; I mean the library and the gallery. The former should assume a very marked and conspicuous form; it would, probably, form a part of the southern range of rooms, but it should be very dif ferent in character from the generality of them, occupying the height of two stories, and clearly distinguishable in its external elevation from the ordinary reception-rooms. In its internal character it should be graver and more severe, and its decorations would all bear reference to its uses. The gallery should probably be on the first-floor, and on the northern side; occupying, perhaps, the whole length of that façade. It would form a delightful morning-room in summer, besides being most useful as a picture-gallery. Others of the rooms might be fitted up to receive objects of antiquity, art, or natural science, as might chance to be desired.

There should be a considerable number of minor staircases between the floors of bedrooms, and arrangements made by which ladies may have their maids within a convenient distance. The servants, generally, would be lodged round their own court. I would try

to make their apartments as pleasant as possible, and to let them have a private garden of their own adjoining their portion of the house.

Endless varieties of the arrangements will, however, be suggested by circumstances: some round a court, as the above, and others forming several smaller courts; some round three sides of one, others without such a feature at all; and others, again, perfectly irregular in outline.

In external character, a noble simplicity is greatly to be preferred to extreme elaboration. I have never, in the domestic architecture of the best periods of mediæval art,—the latter half of the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth centuries,-seen what would be called rich external decoration, otherwise than sparingly used for a few special parts. A tissue of costly ornament over the entire building I have never seen; and I am certain that it is destructive to true dignity. The great object is that every part or feature necessary for use should be boldly and carefully designed, so that everything the eye may single out should be found to be both in itself fine, and also well harmonized with one another, and with the whole.

Our Edwardian castles are noble examples of this: every part masculine and grandly simple; no fear of having too much plain face, and uniformity neither sought nor dreaded; everything, in short, nobly, straightforwardly, and naturally treated. We may,

e It would be endless to attempt an ideal description of this portion of the house. The requisites to the perfect arrangement of the domestic offices and servants' apartments seem every day becoming more extensive, and there can be no doubt that on these points being carefully studied much of the convenience and good management of a great establishment depends.

M

however, reasonably use a greater degree of richness in our more peaceful mansions. The windows will be larger and more numerous, and may be more ornamentally treated; while the height of the stories will give them great scope and boldness, and the whole may be more highly finished: but I would strive earnestly to obtain this without the sacrifice of that grandeur of sentiment which is so infinitely more valuable than any delicacy of ornament.

The roofs being generally gabled, though occasionally hipped, and the parapets unembattled, will give a mansion of this kind a look very different from a castle; but the demands of convenience will often produce those irregular projections and breaks, and differences in height, which add so much to the beauty of those noble buildings. These should, however, be used in moderation, or they will destroy simplicity.

There can be no doubt that hewn stone is the most dignified material for such a building, but I would strongly urge the use of a moderate degree of variety of colour,—such as shafts of marble, or polished granite, inlaid parapets, spandrels and bands, &c., &c.; but if carried too far, it becomes frivolous and distracting.

The use of towers must be limited by their utility ;one or two such breaks in the height are valuable, but I would only use them where useful. It is, however, perfectly consistent to obtain variety of height by using extra stories in certain parts, as utility may permit.

CHAPTER VII.

COUNTRY AND TOWN.

NO. II.-BUILDINGS IN TOWNS.

THERE is certainly a great difference as regards ex

ternal conditions between buildings in the country and in towns: the one all freedom, the other rigidly limited to certain lines and enclosing planes; the one luxuriating in the beautiful accompaniments of nature, the other having nothing with which to harmonize but the neighbouring buildings.

This must unquestionably produce a wide distinction in point of character and treatment, but it is simply absurd to argue that the change of conditions demands a change of style. The style of every period has pervaded all classes of buildings, shaping itself to meet their varied conditions. The theory that one style should be used for the country and another for towns, one for a church and another for a house, is one of the absurdities peculiar to the present day. Two concurrent styles may be running the gauntlet one against the other, this involves no kind of absurdity; but their respective advocates should, to be consistent, each hold their style to be the best for all purposes. The absurdity of the thing arises from that sickly liberalism which admits a style to be the best for one class of building, but thinks a different one

should be used for another; as if a form of architecture is good for anything, and proper to be used at all, unless it has the flexibility and expansiveness which would fit it to one great object as well as to another. The practical argument, however, brought against using our old English styles in towns, while tolerating them in the country, is this: that classic architecture has the claim of actual possession as regards the towns, while the country is free; and consequently, that though in the country we may reasonably make use of that architecture which is admitted best to harmonize with the creations of nature, we must, on the same principle, use in towns such a style as will accord with the character which already prevails there.

As this professes to be a strictly practical argument, I will give it an equally practical answer. Simply look at one of our towns:-look at it from without and from within,—at its most pretentious and at its humblest buildings; and when you have seen enough of it, quietly ask yourself how much respect is due to the architecture in possession.

I am not speaking of the praiseworthy attempts which are now being made to improve it, but of the mass of our town architecture as it actually exists; and I doubt whether any period of the world's history has produced anything more utterly despicable than it is. What are we to respect-I will not say the architeeture, for it is an insult to our noble art to use such a misnomer-but that absence of all architectural thought or feeling which has degraded our ancient cities, which has disfigured our country towns and villages, and rendered the greatest city in the world a huge wilderness of ugliness? Is the architecture of