mon Greek portico at the top of the steps. You know how
the east winds blow through those unlucky couples of pillars, which are
all that your architects find consistent with due observance of the
Doric order. Then, away with these absurdities; and the next house you
build, insist upon having the pure old Gothic porch, walled in on both
sides, with its pointed arch entrance and gable roof above. Under that,
you can put down your umbrella at your leisure, and, if you will, stop a
moment to talk with your friend as you give him the parting shake of the
hand. And if now and then a wayfarer found a moment's rest on a stone
seat on each side of it, I believe you would find the insides of your
houses not one whit the less comfortable; and, if you answer me, that
were such refuges built in the open streets, they would become mere
nests of filthy vagrants, I reply that I do not despair of such a change
in the administration of the poor laws of this country, as shall no
longer leave any of our fellow creatures in a state in which they would
pollute the steps of our houses by resting upon them for a night. But if
not, the command to all of us is strict and straight, "When thou seest
the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou bring the poor that are
cast out to _thy house_."[13] Not to the work-house, observe, but to
_thy_ house: and I say it would be better a thousandfold, that our doors
should be beset by the poor day by day, than that it should be written
of any one of us, "They reap every one his corn in the field, and they
gather the vintage of the wicked. They cause the naked to lodge without
shelter, that they have no covering in the cold. They are wet with the
showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock, for want of a
shelter."[14]

[Footnote 13: Isa. lviii. 7.]

[Footnote 14: Job xxiv. 6-8.]

26. This, then, is the first use to which your pointed arches and gable
roofs are to be put. The second is of more personal pleasurableness. You
surely must all of you feel and admit the delightfulness of a bow
window; I can hardly fancy a room can be perfect without one. Now you
have nothing to do but to resolve that every one of your principal rooms
shall have a bow window, either large or small. Sustain the projection
of it on a bracket, crown it above with a little peaked roof, and give a
massy piece of stone sculpture to the pointed arch in each of its
casements, and you will have as inexhaustible a source of quaint
rich