y correct and harmonious in idea. What is it that we
want in this foggy, damp, and cloudy climate of ours, nine days out of
every ten? Do we want to have a spacious colonnade and a portico to keep
off every ray of a sun only too genial, only too scorching? Is the
heavens so bright with his radiance that we should endeavour to escape
from his beams? Are we living in an atmosphere of such high temperature
that if we could now and then take off our own skins for a few minutes,
we should be only too glad to do so? As far as our own individual
sensations are concerned, we would that things were so; but we know from
unpleasant experience that they are far otherwise.

We believe that every rational householder will agree with us, that the
first thing to be guarded against in this country is cold, next wet,
and thirdly darkness. A man who can really prove that he possesses a
thoroughly warm, dry, and well-lighted house, may write himself down as
a _rerum dominus_ at once: a favoured mortal, one of Jove's right-hand
men, and a pet of all the gods. He is even in imminent danger of some
dreadful calamity falling upon him, inasmuch as no one ever attains to
such unheard-of prosperity without being visited by some reverse of
fortune. He is at the top of the fickle goddess's wheel, and the least
impulse given to one of its many spokes must send him down the slippery
road of trouble. Nevertheless, though difficult to attain, these three
points are the main ones to be aimed at by every English builder and
architect; let him only keep them as the stars by which he steers his
course, and he will come to a result satisfactory in the end.

One other point is of importance to be attended to as a _fundamental_
one, and indeed as one of superstruction too. From the peculiarly
changeable nature of our climate, and from the provision that has to be
made for thoroughly warming a house, there is always a danger of the
ventilation and the drainage being neglected. Not one architect in a
hundred ever allows such "insignificant" points as these to disturb his
reveries. All that he is concerned in is his elevation, and his neatly
executed details; but whether the inhabitants are stifled in their beds
with hot foul air, or are stunk out of their rooms by the effluvia of
drains, are to him mere bagatelles. No trifles these, to those who have
to live in the house; no matter of insignificance to those who have an
objection to the too frequent visits of t