tion are not more complex than those out ofwhich the varieties of the modern house havebeen produced. True taste, as well as commonsense, would say, “ cut your coat according toyour cloth ”—build your house and decorate itaccording to what you can spend upon it: let itrepresent your own ideas of taste and comfort,after due thought, and not be an imitation ofanother’s, or of something in the mode whichyou think you ought to like, neither somethingcostly because of the cost, or a cheap imitationof something costly.

How few houses seem to be built or decoratedupon these principles. How few, indeed, buildtheir houses at all, or have much choice in thematter—except perhaps that of Hobson, whomust also have been a jerry builder.

There is an old saying that fools build housesand wise men live in them. However that maybe, certainly town-dwellers are often like her-mit-crabs, glad to creep into more or less in-convenient empty shells erected by former gen-erations, happy if they succeed in adapting themto their own requirements more or less. In abook on architecture of about the date 1836,elevations and plans are given of “a First-rateHouse,” “a Second-rate House,” “aThird-rate House,” and even “a Fourth-rate”—quiteon the principle of railway carriages, but goingone better, or one worse. They all presentmodest street frontages of about twenty feet,duly cemented and painted. They differ chieflyin the number of their stories, and consequentlywindows, but the plans and elevations are all

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Thoughts on

House-

Decoration