cenotaphs of kings, and other great works undertaken to glorify a reign -such are its chief trophies. We will not say, therefore, that architectural splendour necessarily depends on such despotism, powerful to labour for its own fancied aggrandisement. We will rather say that power and education are slowly passing from the hands of the few into those of the many, and that architecture is likely in future to be less concerned with great and isolated works, more with the amelioration and adornment of the mass of structures rendered necessary where human families most do congregate. We are, to be sure, at present in a state of transition, and little enough has been done in this direction as yet. In one class of buildings, which have multiplied of late years, and where there would seem to be scope for much of appropriate delicacy and grace of architectural treatment-country dwelling-houseswe are lamentably deficient; meanness and vulgarity of design, or more often absence of all that can be called design, characterising a majority of such erections. That this is so is at least as much the fault of the public as of the architects. The author of an able and voluminous work on the English Gentleman's House,' whose professional practice has led him specially into that branch of architecture, has recorded his experience, that in nearly all cases the said English Gentleman has a rooted objection to all attempts to give individuality of style and character to his mansion or its adornments, apparently from a confused notion that it is 'vulgar' and 'pretentious' to aspire to differ from your neighbour in such matters. We fear the statement is only too correct; nor are matters mended if we appeal to the English Lady.

Surely that is no vulgar or commonplace ambition which seeks to render the home, round which

all tender and pleasant associations are to cluster, itself an object of pleasurable contemplation. and suggestion; to make it, not a mere harbour against the weather, with a neat and respectable exterior, but a thing of gracious and inviting aspect, with its lights and shadows, its corridors of 'grateful gloom,' its gaily lighted and decorated festal apartment, or its retired angles for meditation. We may take a lesson in such tastes from our little people: it is pleasant and interesting to see how children, taking possession of a new house, hail with delight any little bit of out-of-the-way invention therein— any bay, arcade, or balcony, which gives them a point of interest to cluster round, breaks the monotony of dead walls and square apartments, and becomes thenceforth a part of their daily life. It is good not to lose all our childish tastes. Nor shall we forget the passers-by, who will give us their benediction for placing in the midst of their favourite landscape a dwelling which, instead of being a blot and an eyesore thereon, a manifest intruder, shall rather seem, from its position and outline, the one picturesque feature to complete the view. An English Home' may be all this, and yet be none the less, in Tennyson's exquisite phrase

The haunt of ancient peace.

And our towns! By what magic are we to evolve anything of rest or pleasure to the eye or mind from these dreary miles of brick and acres of slate, with a dim canopy of smoke overhanging the whole? We have at last a national style, which is really the style of the people: architecture in towns has got into the hands, as we remarked, of the many; and the many are, unluckily, not educated or refined enough to care to do anything with it. Our streets are, in the main, at the mercy of the speculating builders,

whose ideas of architecture range no higher than those of our old friend Balbus in the Latin Exercises, who built a wall.' If Balbus had knocked a few oblong holes in his wall besides, he would then have realised the modern ideal of street architecture. Surely we may be justified in enquiring whether it is not possible for human beings to congregate together in communities, without of necessity surrounding and environing themselves with such an aggregate of utter and unredeemed ugliness, making day hideous. Can we not attain the pleasure and convenience of living in societies without paying the penalty of spreading desolation and gloom around our steps, as if in fulfilment of the denunciation, Cursed be the ground for thy sake'? How far it may be possible, with time and thought and science, to render the regions where men assemble (the meeting-place of souls,' as Mrs. Browning called our chief city) abodes not only of healthfulness but of beauty and dignity of aspect, we will not undertake to say; probably much more may be done in this direction than most persons at present would imagine possible. But at least there is no need that we should be subject to such dire monotony, such utter absence of interest and expression in our street houses and shops, as at present exists. Improvement in this matter will not, certainly, be attained by flanking doorways with pilasters,' or daubing over the front of a 'property with perishable ornament, of a degraded type, in stucco. Permanence, stability, and truthfulness are among the first requirements of architectural expression. The mere unpretending employment of the best and most durable materials available, put together in the most substantial manner, and with a certain picturesque variety (not too quaint or forced), in the outline and arrange

ment of roofs and windows, would do wonders with the aspect of our streets, in comparison with what it is at present. The class of buildings which form the bulk of town streets-shops-offer in their usual arrangement and requirements at once an opportunity for architectural expression and effect. The characteristic feature of a shopthe open ground storey, with plenty of light for displaying the goodsis now made the occasion for the most absurd possible falsity of design, the rage for an expanse of plate glass being such that every apparent support for the superstructure is scouted, and our shops present the appearance of being built on a basement of glass, the only real support being the concealed iron column in the rear, which often very inadequately sus tains the superstructure. If there be one instance stronger than an other of the extent to which architecture is an index of social character and manners, it is in the coincidence between the spirit of hollow profession and puffing and ostentation characteristic of our trading classes, and the flimsy dishonest structures which they erect to recommend their traffic from. Were shopkeepers, as a class, once content to rest for success on real excellence and honesty of work, instead of ostentatious rivalry in display and advertising, we should be able to have a shop architecture in which the ground storey, designed to furnish sufficiency of light without ignoring stability, would afford scope for much new and picturesque treatment. Those who are familiar with the 'Rows' of Chester can conjecture one form which such street architecture might assumea form which might be a source of pleasure to all with an eye for the picturesque; for (to borrow Browning's phrase) 'we are made so that we like' contrast and play of light and shadow, in buildings as well as

in nature.' There is room too for architectural effect of the highest kind in our larger and more ample thoroughfares, were it attempted in the right way. There would be few architectural effects finer, perhaps, than might be afforded by Regent's Quadrant, were it flanked by a really fine design instead of by commonplaces in stucco. Such ensembles, however, are not likely to be attempted until the public and the Government of this country awake to the idea that mere beauty in public streets and buildings may be something worth having and worth paying for as a national possession. We are a good way from this now, if we may judge, among other things, from the feeling and expressions evoked during a parliamentary discussion a year or two back with reference to the sum to be expended on the greatest building of the day, before alluded to-the new Law Courts. On that occasion not only did persons high in office scout contemptuously the idea of spending any more money than was just necessary to make a habitable building, but all the speakers in the debate, without exception, though among the most cultivated of our parliamentary representatives (including one or two who are supposed to take a special interest in art), thought it necessary studiously to disavow any interest in the architectural aspect of the question, and to repeat, with ' damnable iteration,' their solemn declaration that they

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only wished to consider the subject as ratepayers,' and 'from a practical point of view.' In other words, when a great building is to be erected, which, if worthily carried out, would be one of the glories of our capital, a ‘кτñμa éç àɛí' for the nation, and a centre of interest for foreign visitors, we are to haggle over the attempt to cut it down to the bare necessities of walls and roofs; and those who think the architectural aspect of such a work a matter of some importance actually dare not avow their feeling, for fear of being ridiculed. That is what we have come to.

It is in the hope of inducing a more adequate appreciation of the subject on the part of some at least of those who have not hitherto given any consideration to it that the foregoing attempt has been made to indicate, in a very brief and general manner, the leading principles and object and bearing of architecture, or the art of expression and character in building. We look on the amelioration of town architecture in this country as the problem of the modern architect. We have had the age of palaces and of cathedrals— of the feudal and ecclesiastical type of social organisation. The age of the cathedral is past, and we have now to provide, not a feudal or ecclesiastical, but a federal architectureto bring the art home 'to men's business and bosoms,' to adorn and dignify the every-day commercial and domestic life of the people at large.

D

OLGELLY looks old as Baalbec.

as

Cottages solid and firm though rock-hewn, built of huge gray blocks, and roofed with gray flagstones, crouch among their valley woods, under the shadow of the Giant's Chair. Through the irregular cluster of human dwellings go various crooked lanes, with unexpected bye-passages. In one of these passages is a low, solid, simple old gray building, where they say Owen Glendower held a Welsh Parliament as King of Wales. I liked it better than that wilderness of fripperies called the New Palace of Westminster. Several watercourses -here a rocky brook, there a swift runnel-accompany or traverse the devious ways, and are crossed on a flag of rock or stepping-stones. At length some crooked path leading upwards brings you out on the slope of the wooded hills, mountain-tops peeping above, green vale spread below, with groves and winding river. Dolgelly,' I am told, means 'Hazel-dale.'

These fortress-like Welsh cottages might often be cleaner, no doubt. They have not the English trimness, but neither do they attain the characteristic squalor of Irish poverty. Amid fresh air, broad space, bright water running from the hills, their sanitary defects must be of an easily removable kind. Small sleeping-rooms are probably their worst feature; and it is very hard to persuade people of the advantage of an open window. At worst, how incomparably better seems the lot of a child born in one of these, to that of one whose first experience of earth is the smoky twilight and polluted air of a Liverpool or London alley!

As to scenery: is a human being any the better or happier (surely this is tautology) for living his earliest years in view of fair or noble landscapes-mountain, moorland, lake, river, forest, brook and meadow-land, sea-shore? The question, to my mind, answers itself. It is true that, as a rule, you do not find the peasant, when left to himself, praising any scenery, or even consciously noticing it. He is not accustomed to reflect, and much less to express reflec tions, save on the most practical matters; and besides he, like the rest of us, takes for granted what has always been around him. Still his life, I hold, is the better for the beauty, as for the pure air which he breathes without knowing it. He would soon miss both. I heard once of an old woman at Ambleside, who was born and had lived sixty years in that village, and who used to wonder what brought so many gentlefolk from distant parts. A son of hers, living in Staffordshire, in the Black Country,' took ill; she went to nurse him, and on her return the old lady remarked to one of her neighbours, 'Ah! now I ken why folk coom this way for pleasure."

The immense joy and curiosity of childhood can keep even the gutterchild merry; but Town fails to supply those sources of simple and innocent pleasure so lavishly and perennially provided in the broad, subtle, endless variety of natural beauty, and offers in their stead artificial and unwholesome stimulants which drug the mind against the surrounding ugliness, and soon ruin all its freshness. Old age, gentle and contented in a humble

state of life, carrying at threescore and upward a certain unspoilt child-like sweetness in face and in mind; this I find in the cottage or secluded hamlet, not in the great city.

:

There are compensations, you will say. Peacefulness of heart is there any compensation for the loss of this? I do not believe that the beauty of the mountain-range, of every ripple in the brook, and every leaf in the wood, is related to man's spirit in vain. That child has the worser lot (whether he ever suspects it or no) who is born and bred in a great modern town. But I do not say that scenes of remarkable beauty are necessary to every one's education, or that those who live among these must gain the most. All natural beauty has an infinite quality; and something very quiet and moderate (if unspoilt) is enough to fill most cups with satisfaction. Let us all see, if we can, the astounding beauty of which Nature, at her best, is capable, and receive thence what we can of joy, reverence, and hope. But we are not all of us fit, we are none of us at all times fit, to meet these higher degrees of Nature's manifestation with due power and fineness of reception.

Sweet to me seems this poor grass-bordered village lane in the morning sun-enviable the children coming along to school under the rustling leaves, and across the stepping-stones of the brook, the

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little ones helped by the elder. One of these maturer persons, of the age of about seven, a little girl, is half coaxing half towing along a littler brother, perhaps four years old, he sobbing and beblubbered with tears. What's the matter?' I ask; for the Welsh children now-a-days all learn English. Oh, she's a dreadful bad chile!' says the little girl, speaking of her brother; she do always cry going to school.' The principles of English grammar have not sunk in

here very deeply as yet. But the mistake is not surprising when we know that the Welsh for 'she' and 'her' is hi (pronounced hee'), which naturally causes some confusion in the mind of a child of two

languages. The little girl asso

ciated the sound 'hee' now with feminine, now with masculine, but most with the former. Ef is Welsh for 'he.' But though the children. are learning English, the public is still Kymric, and must be appealed to in the old tongue. Here at the little stationer's shop in the marketplace is a newspaper placard bearing, in large type, among announcements still more unintelligible to the foreigner,

GELYNIAETH Y PRWSSIAD AT Y FFRANGCOD GOCHELWCH Y TWYLLWR.

And in the railway waiting-room a pious text admonishes the native: NODFA SIER.

A oes neb yn eich plith mewn adfid?— Gweddied.' Lago, v. 13. 'Iago!'-but know, ignorant Sasnach, this is not a quotation from Shakespeare.

I declare, after all I have said against difference of tongues upon the earth (Bableism-babble), this ancient speech does add much to the piquancy of a Welsh ramble. As to the natives; that they should cling fondly and angrily to their mother-tongue is no wonder; that love has even deeper roots than the love of fatherland. Let Kymric, let Gaelic, fade away from men's lips, as fade it must, gently, quietly, unreproved, not unregretted. Nay, I admit not only the piquancy, but that the knowledge more or less of two languages tends in itself to educate and stimulate the mental powers. It would be hard to find on the round earth a human creature of less vivacity of mind than the ordinary English lowland peasant, and doubtless his dull monotony of speech reacts upon his intellect.