The Richmond-Dow house at Warren, R. I., shown in Plate L, is a typical example of Ruskin Gothic when the poet’s influence was at its height. For the romantically inclined individual of the Transitional period but one course was open, namely, to build himself a Ruskin Gothic cottage. The stone cottages like the Richmond-Dow cottage were the better sort, and if the narrow lancet windows tended to make them a little gloomy they were otherwise not half bad; but the wooden cottages with the perpendicular battens are execrable. Another very decent stone cottage in ecclesiastic Gothic is shown in Plate LI. It has a charming setting on High Street at Middletown, Ct., and again the interior, like Grace church rectory, is a disappointment. The delightful window overlooking the lawn is not nearly so nice from the inside. The fibre of quartered oak was generally too tough for the planes and chisels of the Transitional joiners, who always preferred to work in white pine, and leave to the makeshift grainer the responsibility of doing it up to simulate oak. We are, all of us, familiar with that forlorn art of graining. Then, in order not to forego in the ecclesiastic Gothic cottages another indispensable makeshift--the American veranda--the Transitional architects desecrated rood-screens and chancel carvings. Happily, now-a-days, nobody would think of copying Ruskin in a dwelling-house. People may like to read a conventional gift-book occasionally, and take up “Sesame and Lilies” from the drawing-room table when they have time to kill, and want to get away from everyday life and practical things. Moreover, the most selfish and unscrupulous people in the world are apt to have a vein of sentimental efflorescence in their nature which will reveal itself, when they read Ruskin or Browning, with a zest that is Machiavelian.