however,
is the dining-room, which should always, if possible, abound in
cross-lights; else one half the table will be oppressed by a glare of
light, and the other visible only in _silhouette_.

As to material, stone is the handsomest, and the only one that
constantly grows handsomer, and does not require that your creepers
should be periodically disturbed for painting or repairs. But this is
perhaps all that can be said in its favor. To make a stone house as good
as a wooden one we must build a wooden one inside of it. Wood is our
common material, and there is none better, if we take the pains to make
it tight. There is a prevalent notion that it is the thinness of our
cheap wooden houses that makes them pervious to heat and cold. But no
wooden house, unless built of solid and well-fitted logs, could resist
the external temperature by virtue of thickness. It is tightness that
tells here. Wherever air passes, heat and cold pass with it. What is
important, therefore, is, by good contrivance and careful execution, to
stop all cracks as far as possible. For this, an outside covering of
sheathing-felt, or some equivalent material, may be recommended, and
especially a double plastering inside,--not the common "back-plastering,"
but two separate compact surfaces of lime and sand, inside the frame.

The position, the internal arrangement, and the material being
determined upon, the next point is that the structure shall be as little
of an eyesore as we can make it. Do what we will, every house, as long
as it is new, is a standing defiance to the landscape. In color,
texture, and form, it disconnects itself and resists assimilation to its
surroundings. The "gentle incorporation into the scenery of Nature,"
that Wordsworth demands, is the most difficult point to effect, as well
as the most needful. This makes the importance of a background of trees,
of shrubs, and creepers, and the uniting lines of sheds, piazzas, etc.,
mediating and easing off the shock which the upstart mass inflicts upon
the eye. Hence Sir Joshua Reynolds's rule for the color of a house, to
imitate the tint of the soil where it is to stand. Hence the advantage
of a well-assured base and generally of a pyramidal outline, because
this is the figure of braced and balanced equilibrium, assured to all
natural objects by the slow operation of natural laws, which we must
take care not to violate in our haste, unless for due cause shown.

We hear much of the impor