the future to be shaped to harmonize with this? The house-building of our day is a perfect plague-spot on the fair face of our country. Wherever a new town grows up, whether through manufactures, through the establishment of a watering-place, or from whatever cause, it seems to bring a blight upon all instinctive taste and good feeling; wherever an existing town extends itself, it spreads hideousness over all within its reach. The prevailing style, if it can be called so, has dried up all sense of beauty both among our builders and among the population at large; so that not only the humbler portion of the commercial orders, and those below them, seem utterly incapable of perceiving the difference between ugliness and beauty, but even among the educated classes anything like a true perception of it is quite an exception, and taste in building (whatever the style) is admitted as a tolerated weakness, rather than shewed as a matter in which we are all equally interested, and which is calculated to give to all daily and hourly gratification.

Now what imaginable claim can this wretched incubus have upon our respect or consideration? All the claim it has is to be kicked out as quickly and as effectually as possible. It does not necessarily follow that the style I advocate is the one to take its place, but this much I do think,-every man of taste and feeling must admit that the vernacular mode of housebuilding must be swept away with the besom of destruction, as a public nuisance and a national disgrace. I think this pretty effectually disposes of the argument I am dealing with.

It may be that in some cases it may be desirable to make the change, whatever it may be, not too harshly, so as to avoid too clashing a contrast during the

period of transition. I shall have to consider this in speaking of buildings erected in proximity to existing structures of a decidedly architectural character, such as our club-houses and public buildings; but the argument that we are generally to have respect, in our future architecture, to that manner of building which has spread its dull and heartless ugliness over the length and breadth of our land, is unworthy of a moment's consideration: I will therefore proceed to the question of how far the style I have been advocating for country residences is capable of adapting itself to the conditions prescribed by town architecture. The mere question of whether it possesses such capability may be at once disposed of by reference to the remains of medieval architecture in all the ancient cities of Europe. Nothing can be clearer than the fact that, from the twelfth century onwards, the architecture of the period was just as well represented in the streets of the cities as in the baronial castle or the manor-house. It pervaded everything, adapting itself naturally, and without effort, to every position, material, and requirement; was equally at home in the palace and the cottage,-the church and the town-hall, the monastery and the hospital, the barn and the warehouse; was equally well adapted to the gabled street-fronts of a German city, or the square and corniced façades of an Italian palace; and employed with equal success, whatever material came to hand, whether the timber of Coventry or Brunswick, the brick of Lubeck, Bruges or Verona, the plaster of Essex, the rubble, flint or freestone of different English districts, or the splendid marbles of Florence.

"Yes," it may perhaps be answered, "we admit that your style did all this, and did it successfully, so far as

concerns the demands of its own period, but our day requires something different." Of course it does so; but is it likely that a form of architecture which has never failed in adapting itself perfectly to every exigency by which it has been tried, will be found to have lost its virtue, and to fail in meeting the altered requirements of the present day? Let us, to say the least, give it a fair trial. At the same time, I sincerely trust that the work will not be taken in hand by the men who have made so contemptible a hash of their own style of building, but by a new race of architects,men who have studied and who understand the principles of the style on which they desire to ground their developments; men who have hearts to feel and eyes to perceive the difference between ugliness and beauty, and who have that instinctive perception of common sense and propriety, as well as that freshness of invention, which will enable them to seize upon the true sentiment of the architecture which they select as their groundwork, and to adapt it naturally and fearlessly to the wants of their own days.

The primary condition of street architecture is that each house can, as a general rule, present only one front to the view, and that this front is usually a single plane, and part of the same plane with that of an indefinite number of other fronts. Legislative regulations have, from time to time, rendered this condition more and more absolute by either forbidding, or reducing within the very narrowest limits, projections or breaks in our street architecture, so that we have now submitted to us the problem of how to produce a pleasing effect by dealing with an almost continuous plane.

In the middle ages this condition was far less absolute. In timber houses, the overhanging stories offered

an agreeable and picturesque mode of varying the forms of the street-front, and, whatever the material, projecting oriels, &c., were always allowable, while actual deviations from the line of the street were occasionally admitted. These offered almost indefinite elements for picturesque effect. In laying out new squares and streets of dwelling-houses where ground is reasonably abundant, it is usual to set back the houses a few feet from the pavement,-which not only greatly adds to the comfort of the house, but gives scope for oriels, porches, or other projections which are forbidden when the house comes up to the streetline. The condition of perfect flatness is therefore limited to those streets which are principally devoted to shops. It is to be regretted that it should be imperative even in this case; for the projecting windows which in old houses we often find over shops, are a great relief to the street, and improve the houses without doing any conceivable harm.

The question before us, however, is how the condition can best be met where it does exist, and whether our old styles are as capable of meeting it as any other. The great means of relieving the monotony caused by this prescribed flatness is by availing ourselves freely of the freedom which in one direction is left us, --I mean, of course, in the height. The flatness which is utterly intolerable in Baker-street or Gower-street, where united with uniformity in height, is comparatively harmless when the houses vary considerably in this respect, even when their terminating lines are horizontal, and is still less felt when that difference of height is united with terminal outlines in themselves beautiful or picturesque.

Thus we feel little offended by the flat façades of

the Venetian houses, because, independently of their individual beauty, their diversities in height produce a varied sky-line; while in a Flemish or a German city, though the fronts are often unbroken by any considerable projection, the outline above being not only varied, but shaped into systematic and beautiful forms, no sense of monotony remains.

There are, however, some difficulties about gabled street-fronts. Our building-acts require that the partywall between two houses should rise well above the roofs, so that in the case of either being on fire there shall be a defence against its being communicated to the roof of the other; besides which, the chimney-stacks are of necessity on the party-walls, and it is also necessary that they should rise, so far as possible, from the highest part of the roof; whereas, if the houses were simply gabled towards the street, they must rise out of the intervening gutters. These difficulties have led to the custom, vernacular in and about London, of making the roofs of houses the reverse of being gabled, being made like a V, instead of an A, or more properly, perhaps, having two half-gables instead of one whole one;-a most ludicrous-looking arrangement where not concealed, as it usually is; for though in a long row of houses it gives a number of complete gables, the row always terminates in half-gables.

There can be no doubt that it is usually best to roof street-houses with a longitudinal ridge parallel to the street, and if we wish the front to be gabled, to effect it by cross roofs intersecting with the main roof,—an arrangement having the additional advantage of giving the greatest amount of room for attics. We are, however, by no means compelled by our style to make use of gabled fronts; it allows us the most perfect liberty.