without thereby admitting that the prim and prosaic expression of respectability never so eminent can be scored as a triumph in domestic architecture. The domestic architecture of Venice, or Rouen, or Nuremberg has something more to say to us than that. And a touch of such spirit and picturesqueness as Mr. Bruce Price has given us in a brick house in Fifty-sixth Street (p. 22), or as Mr. Hunt has given us not only in the elaborately ornate house of Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt, but in some dwellings in upper Madison Avenue, is more to be desired than a mere omission to outrage decorum. [Illustration: HOUSES IN MADISON AVENUE. R. M. Hunt, Architect.] Such as the successes of Queen Anne in domestic architecture are, they are its only successes, although it is only fair to say that much interesting work has been done in it, if not strictly of it, in suburban houses and sea-side cottages, which do not come within our present scope. A “feature” suffices for the architecture of a narrow street front, and a feature may be compiled out of the repertory of Queen Anne by a designer who thinks that result a reward of his pains. The oriel, for example, in effect comprises the architecture of the house just mentioned as designed by Mr. Haight. But even in a house which is only a feature the classic detail is not always adjusted without a visible incongruity to the constructions, out of which classic detail cannot spontaneously grow as it grew out of classic constructions. The doorway, for example, of the house designed by Mr. Robertson, which is virtually repeated in the window over it, is a moulded round arch standing upon pilasters of its own width, and thus apparently making of the jamb and arch a complete and detached construction. That is to say, the pilasters seem to carry the arch. The architect of the New York Post-office has done the same thing in a much ruder way. But the elegance of Mr. Robertson’s detail cannot rid even the spectator who does not stop to analyze the source of the feeling of an uneasy sensation that what is thus elegantly expressed is not the fact. An arch does, in fact, exercise a lateral as well as a vertical pressure; and if the arch and its vertical supports formed a detached construction, as they here appear to do, the arch would be unstable. Insensible as the classical Romans were to considerations of artistic expression, they were not so insensible as this. They recognized the existence of a lateral pressure by marking the impost of the arches with a continuous moulding, thus allying the arch with its lateral abutment as well as with its vertical support; and here the architect of the Post-office, wiser, or, if thought be not predicable of his architecture, more fortunate than Mr. Robertson, has been content to imitate them.