ROOF-TREE 251 



arches are needed ! There is endless variety of form 

 and line, great activity of iron and stone, when 

 the eye demands simplicity and repose. No broad 

 spaces, no neutral ground. The architect in his 

 search for variety has made his fagade bristle with 

 meaningless forms. But now and then the eye is 

 greeted by honest simplicity of structure. Look at 

 that massive front yonder, built of granite blocks, 

 simply one stone top of another from the ground to 

 the roof, with no fuss or nutter about the openings 

 in the walls. How easy, how simple, and what a 

 look of dignity and repose ! But probably, the next 

 time we come this way, they will have put hollow 

 metal hoods over the windows, or otherwise marred 

 the ease and dignity of that front. 



Doubtless one main source of the pleasure we 

 take in a brick or stone wall over one of wood is 

 just in this element of simplicity and repose; the 

 structure is visible; there is nothing intricate or 

 difficult about it. It is one stone or one brick top 

 of another all the way up; the building makes no 

 effort at all to stand up, but does so in the most 

 natural and inevitable way in the world. In a 

 wooden building the anatomy is more or less hid- 

 den; we do not see the sources of its strength. 

 The same is true of a stuccoed or rough- cast build- 

 ing; the eye sees nothing but smooth, expression- 

 less surface. 



One great objection to the Mansard roof in the 

 country, now happily nearly gone out of date, is 

 that it fails to give a look of repose. It fails also 



