HO USE- V EN TIL A TION. 597 



fort, and economy. In other words, such desiderata mean proper 

 shelter with efficient ventilation and adequate v:arming. And these 

 now, as in the seventeentli century, are still indeterminate conditions 

 in the problem of house-building. 



If houses in Fuller's time were not built to live in, at least they 

 were pleasant to look at. They pleased the judgment even more than 

 the eye, for they fairly grew out of the requirements of the age, and 

 were, in a great measure, the natural result of the ordinary materials 

 at command. Not so the houses of the present day. Other times can 

 boast their own styles. The castellated, the ecclesiastical, the Eliza- 

 bethan, all express some idea, and are types of their own several ages 

 and wants. But the nineteenth century, with its unlimited resources 

 of iron and glass and its own peculiar civilization, has no distinctive 

 style. The highest reach of architectural effort is a slavish reproduc- 

 tion of forms from which the spirit has lapsed with time and changed 

 with custom. The interest attaching to a building of former ages 

 arises partly from association and partly from the picturesque effect 

 which age throws over it with its decay and damp. We might also 

 say something of the poetic charm of desolation, the interest of rarity 

 and historic truth all, in short, which we instinctively feel can never 

 be produced by the most perfect imitation. 



But all that imagination and feeling conjure up, wherewith to 

 clothe the rude forms of the past, are evidences of disuse and a su- 

 perseded civilization. They no more accord with the full life and en- 

 ergy of the present age than hand-spinning does with the results 

 of the steam-engine ; and low wainscoted rooms, narrow windows, 

 grotesque ornamentations, and rude domestic appliances, are only en- 

 durable when seen through the light of a tender, loving, hereditary 

 pride. When, therefore, we see the constant and deliberate reproduc- 

 tion of old forms, and on assumed aesthetical grounds, we are justified 

 in saying that such choice betokens the surrender of the judgment to 

 a perverted taste ; that the beauty of utility is not understood ; and 

 that the true object of house-bvailding has yet to be learned. 



The anomaly is made more apparent, if the result is less uncom- 

 fortable and unhealthy, when an architect breaks away from whole- 

 some copying, and steals a little from various styles for the outside 

 " treatment" of a modei-n dwelling. The result is a nondescrijjt med- 

 ley. Simplicity is ignored, proportion defied, fitness unthought of. 

 For a rich man's use expense is disregarded in profuse variety ; and 

 for a poor man's dwelling the balance is restored through the saving 

 made in "jerry-building ; " the result being what we have already 

 stated, that average houses in the present day are built neither to live 

 in nor to look at, but to let or to sell. 



The anomaly of a medley of over-ornamentation and mixed styles 

 in the individual villa, erected in the outskirts of large towns, is in- 

 tensified into absolute mischief when such medley is applied to public 



