in stonework; indeed, exactly parallel to them,-both being the natural mode of making use of those materials whose value consists, not in their constructive uses, but in the beauty and variety of the colour and texture of their sectional surfaces. Of this, however, I shall have more to say hereafter.

FLOORS.

Floors are too much lost sight of in modern houses as a field for decoration. In halls and other paved portions, all the varied beauties of paving are open to the choice. If plain stone be used, it may be varied in colour and form, and diversified here and there with encaustic tiles. Marbles of varied colours, also relieved by mosaic-work or encaustic tiles, or by mosaic composed of tiles, offer an abundant fund of varied beauty.

Another valuable element in the decoration of floors is the use of incised patterns, either cut in stone or marble, and filled in with coloured cements. The extent to which this may be carried is quite unlimited. In its coarser form it may be seen at the cathedral of St. Omer, and in its more refined varieties in that at Sienna. The designs need not be limited to geometrical or foliated patterns, but may contain figures or groups drawn with any degree of refinement, the only conditions being that they must be in lines, as on an encaustic tile or a Greek vase, and that the design should convey the idea of the smallest possible amount of reliefa.

a See a very interesting paper on this subject read at the Architectural Museum by W. Burges, Esq., and published in "The Builder."

All these modes of producing richness in the floors need to be more or less studied afresh to fit them for private buildings, in which they will be more closely seen, and therefore require more minute and careful finish than is desirable in churches.

In wood floors, too, there is great room for enrichment by parquetry-the correlative of tesselated or mosaic pavements; and certainly floors thus ornamented, and only partially covered with carpets, add much to the beauty of a room.

METAL-WORK.

The use of ornamental metal-work for locks, hinges, &c., is a point requiring great attention in a Gothic house; it is, however, coming so much into general use, that I need not do more than advert to it. It is admirably carried out in the Houses of Parliament and their adjuncts; but being open to an infinity of varied designs, the architect cannot give too much thought to it. For houses of a simpler character, tolerably suitable metal furniture may be procured ready made from any of those four or five metal-workers who have devoted their attention to the subject; but it would be much better if each architect would carefully design it for himself.

There are few arts which owe so much to our Gothic revival as metal-work, whether in wrought iron, brass, or even in the precious metals. The true modes of using iron and brass in architecture may fairly be asserted to have been revived by the almost unaided exertions of the late Mr. Pugin. Till his time, nothing could be more miserable than almost all which was done; the true principles of their application seemed

utterly lost; but by his exertions a perfectly new phase has come over these arts, and they have become as beautiful and truthful as they before were trashy and offensive. It is pleasant, too, to think that the great seat of metal manufactures-whose name had become the byword for everything which was vile and untruthful-has vindicated its character by becoming the scene of this great revival, in which the principles, precepts, and designs of Pugin have been so ably realized by Mr. Hardman—a name which ought never to be forgotten, as the first to carry out this good work, though he has since been ably followed up by others.

COLOURED DECORATIONS.

The internal decorations of houses, &c., offer too wide a field to be more than superficially touched upon here; they would, in fact, form a subject for a separate treatise.

I would say, generally, that my leading principle applies to this equally with all the other departments of house-building,-that while adhering strictly to the essential feeling of the style, we should nevertheless make our work a thing of our own day, not a mere mimicry of that of a former age; but that in doing so we may follow the dictates of our own individual taste, or that of those for whom the house is erected, as to the degree of modern or medieval feeling with which we may choose to treat it. Some may prefer their houses to border closely (in their decorations, as in other respects,) upon the medieval: these will, I think, always be the exceptions;-others may prefer a mere translation of the ordinary decorations of the

day: these will ever be numerous, but certainly not those with whose taste I should most sympathize; -while an intermediate party, whom I should wish to see in a majority, would endeavour to seize upon the essential æsthetic principles and feeling of the style of art which they have adopted, and to carry them out with perfect freedom; caring little for precedent, and less for antiquarianism, but aiming solely at doing what they are about in the best possible way.

The great principles of colouring are the same for all styles. It is difficult enough to find out what they are, and I agree with Mr. Ruskin, that most of those who act upon them do so unconsciously, and from an instinctive perception of what is harmonious and beautiful, rather than by reference to any ascertained rules. But, whatever the principles may be, they are wholly independent of style; and it is therefore beside my subject to attempt to enter upon them. What I wish to urge is, that in the decoration of Gothic, as of any other buildings, no feeling of antiquarianism should be permitted to lead us to depart from the principles of sound taste.

There is no subject on which we are, at the present day, so much in danger of being led astray as in the coloured decorations of our buildings. We had for years been going on under the impression-so far, at least, as concerns our public buildings-that the plainer and more devoid of colour the material, the more pure and chaste would be the building; we had fancied a plain and uniform stone-colour essential to our exteriors, and a quaker-like drab the most classic hue for interiors. Suddenly, however, a new light has come in upon us. We find that the builders of our cathedrals delighted not in stone-colour, but co

vered it with rich tinctures whenever the opportunity offered; we find, even, that the pure and pearl-like marble of the Greeks was similarly enriched,-indeed, that in no style of architecture has monochromy ever been deemed a beauty. The discovery appears to have driven us to desperation! The lovers of the stonecolour still denounce any departure from it as barbarous, and declare it impossible that the builders of the Periclean or the Edwardian ages could have perpetrated it; while those who know that they did so in very deed, fly off to the contrary extreme, and boldly enunciate the doctrine that colour is the grand essential of architecture, and, so that we get it, that artistic treatment of it is but a secondary affair. It is difficult to say which party do the most harm. One is absolutely passive in its bad taste, the other is often rabidly active in the enormities it perpetrates: one certainly errs on the safe side, by leaving us the blank sheet on which good painting may at some time be executed; the other too often spoils the fair surface by barbarous and tasteless disfigurements. Our position is this having so long discarded coloured decoration, excepting in a very small minority of our buildings, few amongst us have any knowledge of its principles, or (which is far more important) any eye for harmonious colouring; nor in many cases do even those who so loudly cry out for polychromy perceive very correctly the difference between good and bad decoration. For my own part, I think the majority of what is done is utterly disgusting, and infinitely worse than the quaker drab which it supplanted. Surely the advocates of colour do not imagine that it imparts beauty irrespectively of the artistic skill with which it is applied! Bad designs or bad