ght and
skilful manipulation of the artificer, the sashes with muntins an inch
and a half in width, glazed with coarse and greenish glass, and the
mouldings, all hand-made, showing the wavy lines and irregular sections
inseparable from rude hand-work, and then triumphantly asks, "Can your
boasted machinery turn out such work as that?" I answer emphatically,
No, it cannot; and for this we should be thankful. The colonial
mechanics well understood the spirit of Sir Henry Wotton's apt saying,
"In architecture, as in all other operative arts, the end is to build
well." Would such men have spent their time in hewing out beams of oak
ten or twelve inches square by main strength and patience if they had
possessed the circular saw driven by steam-power? The weight of these
huge beams, of badly-proportioned section, forced to support an overplus
of width with comparatively small depth, wrought serious injury to their
buildings,--settling floors, irregularly hollowing roofs and
ridge-lines, and doing far more than time in rendering these old
mansions picturesque and quaint "suggestions" for a revival of "high
art." It seems probable that the workmen of the past would have been the
first to welcome the advent of machinery and make use of its wide
adaptations. At all events, they would never have stooped to the level
of the ultra Queen Anne revivalists, who, in striving after the
picturesque, have often set well-studied construction at defiance.

In this search after quaintness and picturesque effects roofs and
ridge-lines are hollowed out with great labor, walls are made to bulge
by nailing on furrings beneath the boarding, clear sheet-glass, easily
procured of any dimensions, is voted "so inartistic," and the green
crown glass and bull's-eyes are taken from some venerable farm-house,
where they fitly belonged, to fill the irregular fenestration of a
modern parlor.

What is the logical sequence of so anomalous a state of domestic
architecture? Shall we sand our floors, and design chairs with high
backs to break off the draughts from our rattling sashes, from which we
have removed the cords and weights? abandon the equable temperature
throughout our dwellings for individual fires unassisted by the furnace
or steam-coil? revert to the moderator or carcel lamp, casting a dim
light over a radius of a few feet and entirely below the level of the
eye, and place on our outer doors the old brass knockers to awaken the
denizens of a whol