384 THE POPULAR SCIEA^CE MONTHLY. 



design, for no beauty of mere architectural effect will compensate for 

 discomfort and bad internal arrangement. 



A good plan will make a good elevation ; but an elevation in which 

 specific rules which might be fitting for a Greek temple or a mediaeval 

 fortress are insisted on, is in no way suitable to an ordinary house, in 

 which the first essentials are lofty and well-arranged windows, and 

 proper light and air space. 



Gothic tracery and pointed openings are not suited to ordinary sash- 

 windows, and it surely is inconsistent with modern street design to 

 attempt anything in which one or other of the so-called five orders of 

 classic architecture has to be worked into a house in which the front- 

 age is perhaps eighteen or twenty feet at most. When it was at- 

 tempted in the beginning of this century, in the terraces of Regent's 

 Park, generally two or more houses were embraced in the design, a 

 manifest inconvenience and absurdity when one owner wants to paint 

 his front red and the other yellow. 



The fashion of the day is running into modern Dutch, or so-called 

 Queen Anne, and inasmuch as this style admits of ample fenestration, 

 and does not limit the size of light-openings, and relies for its piquancy 

 and character on honest red brick instead of sham plaster and vulgar 

 imitation, we may be thankful for small mercies, and be content with 

 a revival of a sixteenth and seventeenth century Renaissance school 

 of architecture, which gives us at least color and picturesqueness in 

 our London streets. 



I go so far as to say that the man who builds a red-brick house 

 in a town, where want of color tends to make everything glaring or, 

 where smoke-covered, gloomy, is a benefactor to his species ; and I go 

 still further in saying that to a great extent the materials used should, 

 in a manner, be those which are peculiar to the country and locality. 

 Stone of various kinds is indigenous to certain localities, and naturally 

 suggests itself to the particular neighborhoods. 



We have plenty of good brick clay ; we can obtain readily first- 

 class red bricks and terra-cotta, and both these materials are more 

 lastinsr and more suitable to London smoke and the deleterious action 

 of London atmosphere than almost any stone which exists. 



Glazed and colored brick, and faience, and terra-cotta, admit of 

 almost any variety of design ; they give picturesqueness, warmth, and 

 color where they are wanted. 



I should like to see London streets made picturesque and beautiful 

 in color, with terra-cotta and glazed faience, which every shower of 

 rain would cleanse and improve, and should like to see every stucco- 

 fronted building decaying and unlet. As a rule, this sort of work is 

 not only imitation of stone, bad in taste, bad in construction, and unfit 

 to last any time, but glosses over inferior building, and covers a multi- 

 tude of sins which it would be well for the occupiers, from a mere 

 common-sense and sanitary point of view, to lay bare. 



