fastenings of the pipe, it has spouts of discharge at intervals of
three or four feet,--rows of magnificent leaden or iron dragons' heads,
full of delightful character, except to any person passing along the
middle of the street in a heavy shower. I have had my share of their
kindness in my time, but owe them no grudge; on the contrary, much
gratitude for the delight of their fantastic outline on the calm blue
sky, when they had no work to do but to open their iron mouths and pant
in the sunshine.

Sec. IV. When, however, light is more valuable than shadow, or when
the architecture of the wall is too fair to be concealed, it becomes
necessary to draw the cornice into narrower limits; a change of
considerable importance, in that it permits the gutter, instead of being
of lead and hung to the edge of the cornice, to be of stone, and
supported by brackets in the wall, these brackets becoming proper
recipients of after decoration (and sometimes associated with the stone
channels of discharge, called gargoyles, which belong, however, more
properly to the other family of cornices). The most perfect and
beautiful example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the
rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by small
brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower edge decorated
with the English dogtooth moulding, whose sharp zigzag mingles richly
with the curved edges of the tiling. I know no cornice more beautiful in
its extreme simplicity and serviceableness.

Sec. V. The cornice of the Greek Doric is a condition of the same kind,
in which, however, there are no brackets, but useless appendages hung to
the bottom of the gutter (giving, however, some impression of support as
seen from a distance), and decorated with stone symbolisms of raindrops.
The brackets are not allowed, because they would interfere with the
sculpture, which in this architecture is put beneath the cornice; and
the overhanging form of the gutter is nothing more than a vast dripstone
moulding, to keep the rain from such sculpture: its decoration of guttae,
seen in silver points against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a
kind of continual refreshment and remembrance of rain in it; but the
whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only endurable when the
eye is quickly drawn away from it to sculpture.

Sec. VI. In later cornices, invented for the Greek orders, and farther
developed by the Romans, the bracket a