I really see no reason why we should be told that marble--white marble--is unsuited to an English garden. In Italy we know how beautiful is its appearance, and I do not think that any one should be sarcastic in referring to the façades of some of the mansions in Fifth Avenue, New York City. At least three of these represent the best that can be bought combined with the best that can be thought. They do not look aggressively ostentatious, any more than does Milan Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, or Lyons' restaurants. Marble enters largely into the “frontages” of Fifth Avenue as well as those of other abodes of the wealthy in some of the cities of the United States; but we are warned off its use in the open air in England by writers who are not timid in formulating canons of what they call “good taste.” In the façade of the Cathedral at Pisa, there is a black column among the gray ones which are so effectively introduced in the Romanesque “blind arcading.” I am sorry that I forget what is the technical name for this treatment; but I have always thought, when feasting upon the architectural masterpiece, that the master-builder called each of these little columns by the name of one of his supporters, but that there was one member of the Consistory who was always nagging him, and he determined to set a black mark opposite his name; and did so very effectively by introducing the dark column, taking good care to let all his friends know the why and wherefore for his freak. I can see very plainly the grins of the townsfolk of the period when they saw what had been done, and hear the whispers of “Signor Antonio della colonna nigra,” when the grumbler walked by. The master-builders of those times were merry fellows, and some of them carried their jests--a few of them of doubtful humour--into the interior of a sacred building, as we may see when we inspect the carving of the underneath woodwork of many a _miserere._ I should like to set down in black and white my protest against the calumniator of marble for garden ornaments in England, when we have so splendid an example of its employment in the Queen Victoria Memorial opposite Buckingham Palace--the noblest work of this character in England.