prefers to linger in silent admiration--to told his arms as the musical critics used to do when Patti was at the zenith of her powers, but while thoroughly enjoying every fine artistic _nuance_ of the performance, a disturbing premonition reminds him--warns him that if paid to criticise and not to praise he will, in all probability, lose his employment. They have no bit of architectural detail in England that the Germantown doorway need be afraid of. Of course you will go into ecstasies over it; I do. But you will experience difficulty in finding an architect capable of grasping the idea sufficiently well for you to incorporate the charm of it in the new house you are planning to build. The modern dwelling-house is conceived so differently, plotted so differently, with unsympathetic T squares and triangles, and is governed so strictly by materials easily milled, and easily nailed in place by the carpenter, as to put that element of graciousness which signifies so much to our lives and happiness--that “charm not deducible by mathematics,” that makes us think, and whereby we eventually become better men and women in the world, absolutely beyond the pale of realization. CHAPTER V THE GRAND EPOCH Then there came a time when the legitimate development and prosperity of the colonies produced, not what the forcing box of commercialism has produced--a _moneyed class_ under obligations to no one--but an _aristocracy_ whose _noblesse oblige_ vouchsafed the encouragement of architecture in common with other arts and refinements. And if there remain to us, yet fairly intact, a representative town of this aristocracy that we may go to look at, to-day, to see what it was like, I should say it was Anne Arundel Town (Annapolis), the ancient capital of Maryland. The best description of Annapolis in that relation which concerns us most--its fascinating old houses and their history--is written by T. Henry Randall in the “Architectural Record” (New York), Vol. 1, No. 3. Indeed, I regard this description as the most valuable PLATE XXVII. [Illustration: MOUNT VERNON ON THE POTOMAC. THE MOST ORIGINAL AND REPRESENTATIVE OF COLONIAL EXEMPLARS.]