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time, as appears by Bottom ’s device for representing a wall in the greatchamber to enact the play of Pyramus and Thisby.

“ Some man or other must present wall: and let him have some plaster, or some lome, orsome rough-cast about him, to signify wall.”—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Scene 1.

Barge-boards, pendants, pinnacles, and brackets, being the chiefdecorations of houses in this style of architecture, should always be madeof strong oak, and left to acquire, by age, a gray hue; and not of slightdeal painted, as is now the too frequent practice—dictated sometimes bymiserable economy, and at others arising from the ignorance of builders :time, instead of improving, impairs such affectations.

The use of barge-boards is to conceal the barge-couples, and theunder side of the laths and tiles projecting beyond the face of the wall.In many places where these purfled arrises to gables have been latelyintroduced, they are made of sizes so monstrously disproportionate, andof such open and heterogenous forms, as to defeat their purpose, andexpose what they were intended to mask.

Great attention should be given to the colour of plastered houses.Mr. Uvedale Price , who seems to have deeply considered this subject, ob-serves, in his Essays on the Picturesque, that “ one of the most charmingeffects of sunshine is its giving to objects not merely light, but thatmellow golden hue so beautiful in itself, and which when diffused, as ina fine evening, over the whole landscape, creates that rich union andharmony, so enchanting in nature and in Claude: in any scene, whetherreal or painted, where such harmony prevails, the least discordancy incolour would disturb the eye; but if we suppose a single object of aglaring white to be introduced, the whole attention, in spite of all ourefforts to the contrary, will be drawn to that one point; if many suchobjects be scattered about, the eye will be distracted among them.

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