contemplate
it, not knowing what to make of it exactly, but hoping it is all right;
and then there is a dinner given to the Great Blank, and the morning
papers say that the new and handsome building, erected by the great Mr.
Blank, is one of Mr. Blank's happiest efforts, and reflects the greatest
credit upon the intelligent inhabitants of the city of so-and-so; and
the building keeps the rain out as well as another, and you remain in a
placid state of impoverished satisfaction therewith; but as for having
any real pleasure out of it, you never hoped for such a thing. If you
really make up a party of pleasure, and get rid of the forms and fashion
of public propriety for an hour or two, where do you go for it? Where do
you go to eat strawberries and cream? To Roslin Chapel, I believe; not
to the portico of the last-built institution. What do you see your
children doing, obeying their own natural and true instincts? What are
your daughters drawing upon their cardboard screens as soon as they can
use a pencil? Not Parthenon fronts, I think, but the ruins of Melrose
Abbey, or Linlithgow Palace, or Lochleven Castle, their own pure Scotch
hearts leading them straight to the right things, in spite of all that
they are told to the contrary. You perhaps call this romantic, and
youthful, and foolish. I am pressed for time now, and I cannot ask you
to consider the meaning of the word "Romance." I will do that, if you
please, in next lecture, for it is a word of greater weight and
authority than we commonly believe. In the meantime, I will endeavor,
lastly, to show you, not the romantic, but the plain and practical
conclusions which should follow from the facts I have laid before you.

25. I have endeavored briefly to point out to you the propriety and
naturalness of the two great Gothic forms, the pointed arch and gable
roof. I wish now to tell you in what way they ought to be introduced
into modern domestic architecture.

You will all admit that there is neither romance nor comfort in waiting
at your own or at any one else's door on a windy and rainy day, till
the servant comes from the end of the house to open it. You all know the
critical nature of that opening--the drift of wind into the passage, the
impossibility of putting down the umbrella at the proper moment without
getting a cupful of water dropped down the back of your neck from the
top of the door-way; and you know how little these inconveniences are
abated by the com