ood hands.

The mosaic and terrazzo flooring department of the Murdock Parlor Grate
Company already has a list of over fifty public buildings in which
important work has been done. The terrazzo floors so much admired in the
new Public Library, covering a surface of 60,000 square feet, the mosaic
floor of the Members' corridor in the Massachusetts State House, and
especially the entrance to the Members' vestibule, a part of this floor,
and the lobbies to the Bowdoin Square and Keith's Theatres, Boston, also
mosaic, are examples easily inspected by Boston architects.

Other public buildings in New England in which this company have done
admirable mosaic work are the new McLean Asylum buildings, the Arlington
(Mass.) Public Library, the Exchange Club, Boston, and a number of bank
buildings.

Throughout the Back Bay district there are numberless vestibule and
hall floors in fine residences, many of which are gems in color and
design.

We have mentioned only a few examples, but almost every New England
architect can, by writing to the Murdock Parlor Grate Company, be
referred to examples of their work in his neighborhood, and we think he
will find their estimates as low as it is safe to accept, and their
responsibility is beyond all question.

Books.

_A Handbook of Architectural Styles_: Translated from the German of A.
Rosengarten by W. Collett-Sandars. New edition, 639 illustrations. New
York: C. Scribner's Sons. 1895. For sale by Bates & Guild, Boston.
$2.50.

A review of the contents of this work is scarcely necessary, as it is
already recognized as a standard by all who are at all familiar with
architectural literature. As compared with other books upon the history
of architecture, the point of view from which the subject has been
looked at furnishes the main distinction. This cannot be better stated
than in the words of the editor of the present edition, Professor T.
Roger Smith. He says: "It is essentially that of an academic and
classical professor, and one brought up not only in familiarity with the
best examples of ancient art, but with the habit of mind which recurs to
classic and especially to Greek originals, both as a standard of taste
and as models for treatment of modern works. This feeling, which held
sway in England in the day of Chambers, of Soane, and of Cockerell, has
now almost died out from our practice and our literature. The works of
the contemporary English and French writers on ar