Previous to this advent of rabid democracy there lingered a vestige of a certain code of social restrictions which once regulated architecture almost as absolutely as it did the private affairs of every family in the land. Once upon a time the house-builder would have no more thought of departing from what I shall call “the straight and narrow path” of precedent in architecture than he would have been guilty of a religious defection such as wilfully absenting himself from meeting, or an ethical defection such as purposely remaining single. This abrogation of personal liberty bore rather roughly, perhaps, upon the individual; but it was the very salvation of architecture, being the censorship to which we are indebted for whatever true inspiration we are enabled to draw out of the Colonial exemplars. “Precept” was the word upon which the American Renaissance was founded. The Colonial builders builded as they were taught to build, not as they may have wished to experiment. And let us see, for a moment, who their masters were, that we may be in a position to understand something of the reason for their success. While, in olden times, the architect and the builder were often united in the same person, it must have been a very differently equipped individual from the one who awaits his customers behind the pretentious signboard thus lettered which nowadays adorns the front of many a contractor’s place of business; because this legend has come to mean extreme mediocrity in both callings. Nor does the word “architect” alone signify everything it should in a great commercial era such as ours. I have heard the head draughtsman of a noted modern architectural office in New York City distinguish one of his principals from the other partners PLATE XIV. [Illustration: DOORWAY, MEANS’ HOUSE, AMHERST, N. H.] of the firm by a very significant expression, viz.: “Mr. ---- is an _architect_.” And I am constrained to discriminate with equal severity when I see the illustration or the usual “modern American house,” so called, placed in “deadly parallel column” beside a Colonial exemplar erected a century ago. Nobody, as a rule, can inform us who made the drawings of our fascinating prototype. Both name and identity of its designer have, in all probability, been irretrievably mislaid in oblivion; but he was an _architect_! (See Plate XIII).