r builders" do not
confine themselves to towers and palaces, but give infinite thought and
loving care to "homes for human beings." The average old-fashioned New
York house, so far as I have seen it, is externally unattractive (the
characteristic material, a sort of coffee-coloured stone, being truly
hideous), and internally dark, cramped, and stuffy. But modern houses,
even of no special pretensions, are generally delightful, with their
polished wood floors and fittings, and their airy suites of rooms. The
American architect has a great advantage over his English colleague in
the fact that in furnace-heated houses only the bedrooms require to be
shut off with doors. The halls and public rooms can be grouped so that,
when the curtains hung in their wide doorways are drawn back, two,
three, or four rooms are open to the eye at once, and charming effects
of space and light-and-shade can be obtained. Of this advantage the
modern house-planner makes excellent use, and I have seen more than one
quite modest family house which, without any sacrifice of comfort, gives
one a sense of almost palatial spaciousness. An architectural exhibition
which I saw the other day proved that equal or even greater care and
attention is being bestowed upon the country house, in which a
characteristically American style is being developed, mainly founded, I
take it, upon the suave and graceful classicism of Colonial
architecture. The wide "piazza" is its most noteworthy feature, and the
opportunity it offers for beautiful cloister-work is being utilised to
the full. Furthermore, the large attendance at the exhibition showed
what a keen interest the public takes in the art--a symptom of high
vitality.

In Philadelphia, too, where I spent some time last week, there is a good
deal of exquisite architecture to be seen. The old Philadelphia dwelling
house, "simplex munditiis," with its plain red-brick front and white
marble steps, has a peculiar charm for me; but it, of course, is not a
product of the present movement. I do not know the date of some lovely
white marble palazzetti scattered about the Rittenhouse Square region;
but the Art Club on Broad Street, and the Houston Club for Students of
the University of Pennsylvania, are both quite recent buildings, and
both very beautiful. I could mention several other buildings that are,
as they say here, "pretty good" (a phrase of high commendation); but I
had better get safely out of New York before I