The milestones of art are the signboards of history. Political moves may or may not signify. Treaties international are usually effected by skilful diplomacy, foes may be bluffed by naval and military manœuvres; but the art of a nation betrays its innermost confidences--the stuff whereof ’tis made. If, however, as happened at the Centennial Exposition in 1876, a political advent coincides with one in art, that milestone becomes an epoch-marker extraordinary. In 1876 the arts of the world, for the first time, were made to pass before this people as an alluring pageant, and a general desire to avail ourselves of them returned to replace the vacuum that had existed since the platform of Andrew Jackson denounced the refinements of life as attributes of an overbearing aristocracy, patroons and manor-lords, and necessarily PLATE LXII. [Illustration: ULTRA-FASHIONABLE, QUEEN-ANNE ARCHITECTURE.] [Illustration: FASHIONABLE HOUSE--EASTLAKE SCHOOL.] fraught with every danger to a nation’s liberty and strength. But let us see how unintelligently, nevertheless, we went about the new art movement. Like the North American Indian who habitually first learns the vices of civilization, we were not slow to discover the meretricious in whatever art the old world chose to exhibit, and this we began assiduously to adapt, especially in the field of applied ornament. A school of design called the “Eastlake school” (Plate LXII), I believe, was the first to emerge from the confused mass of ideas with which the American brain became suddenly surcharged. As the Rococo in France had been called down by the Empire, so was our Scaramouch architecture of the Reign of Terror, with all its extravagant circular work, called down by the Centennial, and straight lines innumerable--congeries of straight lines--became the rage. Mouldings were no longer returned, but died against perpendicular members the faces of which were also ornamented by lines. With the jig-saw still dangerously convenient there was shortly evolved from the Eastlake propaganda, at first devoted to the manufacture of furniture, an American travesty of the eighteenth century châlet of Switzerland. The historic châlets were covered with ornament. On close inspection, however, this ornament was easily seen to be hand carving of the most skilful description; but never mind, our jig-saws could fake it sufficiently well to please a not over-fastidious public taste, and it is hence we derive fashionable house number one.