one's apprehension. You do not in Gothic, as in Italian architecture, plan a window where it is not wanted to match another which is, but simply use or omit them as utility suggests. If you want a baywindow to increase the capacity of your room and the range of your view, you introduce it without a thought as to whether or not it corresponds with some other portions of the building; nor would you dream of such folly as adding one from any such motive where it is not wanted. This freedom of treatment gives infinite variety to your buildings. Once master the principles of the style, and work as freemen, divesting yourselves of all feeling of being fettered by precedent, and there is no limit to the noble things which may be produced. Every difficulty may be turned into a beauty, and even poverty may give rise to a simple honesty of treatment, whose appropriateness will more than compensate for its homeliness.

CHIMNEY-SHAFTS.

Among the instances in which necessary objects have been made to contribute to beauty, the chimney-stack holds a prominent place. I single this out, while passing over so many others, because I observe a disposition among some of our best Gothic architects to neglect it, and to make their chimneys bare, and even ugly, from a feeling that the more ornate forms belong to the later styles which they repudiate, and which have been hackneyed ad nauseam in modern houses. This, however, is a feeling which must not be allowed too much influence. We are building in a northern climate, and in what is supposed to be par eminence a northern style; and it is obvious that the means of

warming our houses is only second in importance to those of lighting them. Add to this, that we live in an age in which comfort is so cared for, that every room, however small, must have its fireplace; it becomes, then, doubly clear that the chimney must of necessity be one of the most prominent features in our domestic buildings, and common sense demands that it should be carefully and architecturally treated. From the thirteenth century onward it was so treated, and made greatly to conduce to the beauty of the building; and strange indeed would it be, if now, in reviving our national architecture, we were to abandon to ugliness a feature now become doubly essential.

The increased number of our flues does, however, demand some reconsideration of their treatment. We cannot to any great extent subdivide them, as formerly, into separate shafts, each containing but one flue; we may do this here and there, but the multitude of flues forbids its being done generally. If, again, the beautiful brick chimney-shafts of our later mediæval buildings have been hackneyed in modern times, surely we can make new designs for ourselves equally beautiful, and not open to the same objection! We may study all the varieties which we find, from the earliest use of the chimney down to the beautifully simple brick shafts of the seventeenth century cottage, and take hints from them all, but still make our designs for ourselves to suit our slightly altered requirements, and at the same time give freshness of character to our works. There is here a wide field for novelty of treatment.

IN

CHAPTER IV.

INTERNAL FEATURES AND DECORATIONS.

N the interior of our houses we have even greater scope than externally for giving originality of character to our style, and for rendering it essentially our own, rather than a mere revival.

WOOD-WORK.

In the wood-work alone there is unlimited opportunity for original development. The joiners of the last century or two have done much to render the mechanical construction of these internal fittings both convenient and easy of execution; but, working in the style of their time, all their contrivances and arrangements have been adapted to it. It is for us to examine carefully into what they have been doing,-to subject it to a rigorous scrutiny, to reject such of their practices as are petty, such as savour in any degree of sham, and such as arise especially from the style they are working in; but to avail ourselves of all which is genuine and useful. We should do the same with the ancient joiners' work; distinguishing the features which are imperfect or clumsy, or which arose from the great abundance of material, from those which are dictated by soundness and truthfulness of construction, and which are especially characteristic of the style. By uniting the good qualities of both, and by adding whatever, either in construction or in design, our own

necessities or our individual taste may suggest, we may obtain what is at once consistent with the style we are reviving, and with the usages of our own day; while in its decorative character it is open to variety only limited by the inventive powers of the architect.

Here, as elsewhere, the character may very fairly be varied to meet the taste of those for whom the house is built. A person of antiquarian prepossessions may find pleasure in making his house rigidly mediæval: I have no wish to dissuade him from doing so, and can sympathize in his feelings; what I wish to urge is this, that in reviving Gothic architecture for civil and domestic purposes, we do not mean such a domestic style as existed in the middle ages, any more than the leaders of the classic Renaissance of the sixteenth century aimed at reproducing Roman villas, such as have since been excavated at Pompeii, but that we wish to revive the artistic style of our indigenous architecture, applying it freely, and subject to the rules of common sense, to our own requirements; and that in doing so, we are at liberty, within the reasonable limits of the style, to adhere as closely to mediæval feeling, or to bend it as much to the feelings of our own day, as our individual taste and judgment may dictate.

CEILINGS.

In ceilings, again, this rule, or rather this liberty, is very important. In houses of the earlier periods, so far as we know them, it seems to have been most usual to expose the actual timbers of the floors, so as to form the ceiling (if it may be called so) of the room below, the actual floor-boards being sometimes seen between the joists, or a board used as a panel, or

possibly a surface of plastering being used below them to fill in the interstices. This purely constructional ceiling seems to have been usual in the Venetian and other mediæval palaces in Italy, and was common throughout Europe. It is in floors the equivalent to an open roof,—the simple exposure, with or without decoration, of the actual construction.

The next description of ceiling is that in which the beams and other main timbers only are exposed, the joists being concealed either by panelling, plain boarding, or perhaps by plain plastering. The third is where no constructive features are seen, but the whole surface is lined with panelling or boarding, the panels always having wood mouldings, the plain faces usually boarded, but occasionally plastered. Plain plastered ceilings also occur; but I know of no instance in which, during the true Gothic periods, plaster cornices, or mouldings, have been used in ceilings. I have met with one case, in a church of the end of the fifteenth century, in which a ceiling being divided into panels by wood mouldings, the plain spaces are covered with a very hard surface of plaster, in which geometrical patterns were set out with the compasses, as if as a guide for decorative painting. No better ceiling could, perhaps, be devised for modern uses. All the above are legitimate modes of forming a ceiling. The first, or constructive ceiling, is perhaps best suited to a public building. It is less suited to a house, as the multiplicity of its rooms makes it difficult so to arrange the timbers as to look well in all of them. The second, or semi-constructive plan, suits the larger rooms of a house, but not the smaller ones, as the beams are not likely to come symmetrically in all; while the third, or non-constructive ceiling, suits those