A FEW WORDS ON OUR PROGRESS IN BUILDING. 219 



Then the lower windows, I'm not quite decided upon ; but what 

 would you say to Egyptian, sir ? I think I should like my windows 

 Egyptian, with hieroglyphics, sir ; storks and coffins, and appropri- 

 ate mouldings above ; I brought some from Fountain's Abbey the 

 other day. Look here, sir ; angel's heads putting their tongues out, 

 rolled up in cabbage leaves, with a dragon on each side riding on a 

 broomstick, and the devil looking out from the mouth of an alliga- 

 tor, sir.* Odd, I think ; interesting. Then the corners may be 

 turned by octagonal towers, like the centre one in Kenilworth Cas- 

 tle ; with Gothic doors, portcullis, and all, quite perfect ; with cross 

 slits for arrows, battlements for musketry, machiolations for boiling 

 lead, and a room at the top for drying plums ; and the conservatory 

 at the bottom, sir, with Virginia creepers up the towers ; door sup- 

 ported by sphinxes, holding scrapers in their fore paws, and having 

 their tails prolonged into warm-water pipes, to keep the plants safe 

 in winter, &c.' " 



We have seen buildings in England, where such Bedlam sugges- 

 tions of taste have not only been made, but accepted either wholly 

 or partly by the architect, and where the result was, of course, both 

 ludicrous and absurd. There is less dictation to architects in this 

 country on one hand, and more independence of any class on the 

 other, to bring such examples of architectural salmagundies into ex- 

 istence though there are a few in the profession weak enough to 

 prostitute their talents to any whim or caprice of the employer. 



But by far the greater danger at the present moment lies in the 

 inordinate ambition of the builders of ornamental cottages. Not 

 contented with the simple and befitting decoration of the modest 

 veranda, the bracketed roof, the latticed window, and the lovely ac- 

 cessories of vines and flowering shrubs, the builder of the cottage ornte 

 in too many cases, attempts to ingraft upon his simple story of a 

 habitation, all the tropes and figures of architectural rhetoric which 

 belong to the elaborate oratory of a palace or a temple. 



We have made a point of enforcing the superior charm of sim- 

 plicity and the realness of the beauty which grows out of it, in 



* This grotesque device is actually carved on one of the groins of Koslin 

 Castle, Scotland. 



