Notes and Reviews 
cold weather has drawn sap underground and 
human life within doors, the desolation in 
city streets might easily be overcome by the 
display of winter or all-year-round window 
and balcony gardens, containing evergreens, 
rather than herbaceous plants alone, — for 
evergreens, be it remembered, are better 
suited than all other kinds of plants to closely 
associate with architecture, harmonizing as 
they do with the necessary formality present 
in every city house-front. If one group of 
plants only can be supported there is the 
problem of combining with the summer 
flowers at least a few things which will re¬ 
main green throughout the year. Better yet 
would be the plan to have a winter box 
ready to replace the “ season window-box.” 
T HE decoration of city windows and bal¬ 
conies has been tor many years encouraged 
in London, and with even more zeal in Paris. 
In the French capital the municipal authori¬ 
ties have offered prizes for the best floral 
decorations. Where every apartment has 
its balcony, as is the case in Latin countries, 
a display may be more easily made than it 
the garden be confined to the window-sill 
alone. For this reason balconies should be 
regarded as a more necessary feature of our 
dwellings than we have been wont to con¬ 
sider them—as much to be desired as the 
bay-window “tor seeing up and down” the 
street. In many cases, we fancy, architects 
have not suggested balconies for dwellings 
for the reason that if built, they remain un¬ 
used and unadorned. The interest in gar¬ 
dening, and in beautifying cities, should in 
future create a demand for these features so 
easily obtained, as the alleys of Italian quarters 
testify, and architects must be induced to 
supply them. 
“In English Homes’” is a volume which 
shows by means of photographs taken by 
Mr. Charles Latham the interiors of English 
country houses of the manorial type. The 
examples embrace a wide range of England’s 
architectural history, from the ancient and 
now decaying old halls such as Haddon, 
Little Moreton, Smithells, Bramshill and 
>“ In English Homes,” by Charles Latham. 421 pp., folio, with 
many half-tone illustrations. Imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 
1904. Price, $15.00 net. 
perhaps fifty others to the modern Sandring¬ 
ham and the new “Deanery” at Sonning, the 
latter designed by an architect of our own 
day, Mr. E. L. Lutyens. Here are great 
baronial halls, magnificent galleries, libraries 
of cultivated wealth, firesides where many 
generations of noble families have been 
reared. To contemplate these is to admire 
what was both the cradle of a domestic race 
and the expression of a mature art. That 
art clothed rude necessities with the grace of 
Britain’s most prosperous ages, and rendered 
these manor houses such that early American 
builders and those of our own times still re¬ 
gard as ideal settings for refined and .comfor¬ 
table living. And yet these must be taken 
by us with qualification and utilized with 
care. Even the memory of feudalism can 
no longer lend grandeur to the great hall or 
give a plea of truth to such architectural 
forms as tourelles and battlements ; the age 
of legitimate half-timber construction has 
now passed away forever ; those long galler¬ 
ies are useless in a land where democracy 
puts a check upon pomp and pageantry; 
those great bays exposing half a room to 
chill glass are unsuited to Yankee winters. 
New materials and new means of producing 
them give rise to new architectural forms. 
Upon the other hand the lessons which 
these interiors will always hold are the gran¬ 
deur of finely proportioned rooms, the magic 
of ingenious paneling, the dignity of re¬ 
straint in furnishing apartments having in 
themselves an architectural message, the 
frankness of exposing the true character of 
materials. Rich effects of beamed ceilings may 
here be studied, the decorative use of large 
areas of unglazed bookshelves, of carving 
rightly placed and the superb effect of large 
portraits if well hung against a sufficient 
background. All of these fine old places are 
throughout the work illuminated by the in¬ 
stinct of an artistic photographer, not only 
technically skilled in his art, but possessed 
of unusual judgment in selecting his points 
of view and the best conditions of light. The 
letter press must necessarily play a secondary 
part in a book so largely devoted as this is 
to pictures. It is very interesting reading, 
however, and is given largely to the history 
of homes that really have a history and a 
long one. 
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