properly proportioned room should neither be too low nor too high, though sometimes the latter is overlooked; especially in modern terrace houses, where a well-like appearance is given to a room of ordinary dimensions by too great height. Singularly enough, however, it is a fact that a well-contrived house may always be said to afford greater facilities for a good exterior than an ill-contrived one; the fitness inside shows itself in the exterior. And as to beauty, it is hard indeed if, when the building is successful in these two other requirements, the third does not follow. The same exterior may of course be ornamented in many ways, and may have either a Gothic or classic coat, or be left alone; but when once the necessary outline is secured decoration is simple. One great charm of old houses is that they do not conceal either their roofs or chimneys. Modern ones are apt to be shy of letting them appear, and contrive by parapets and other devices to hide them. A staircase at the end of this chapter illustrates the comfortable easy landings and flights that characterise old house architecture, even when on an unpretending scale. The date is about 1600, and the comfort of ascent is far beyond any staircases that we should expect to find in a moderately-sized house in the present day. An architect of some eminence, in reading a paper on Gloucester Cathedral, said (a few years ago), “I raise my voice against what I consider cankers in modern architecture, where art is so far forgotten in the desire of the architect to obtain for his works a so-called individuality. This individuality is enticing to very young men, who are attracted by the eccentricities of old buildings, or the architect who imports them, for nearly all modern individuality arises from too strongly emphasising and repeating _ad nauseam_ some odd bit picked up in foreign travel. It so happens that many architects have no faith in good sound building, they have no trust in the grandeur of stability, they have no love for simplicity, no appreciation for breadth of treatment: they go in for quaintness.” So far as this is intelligible, it means to say that a broad row of houses without individuality is preferable to one where the individual tastes and requirements of the owner are conspicuous. The same writer proceeds to object to the early capitals that distinguish the Gothic of the twelfth century when clustered round a column, and, as he says, “wrap it round a shaft nearly as big as an Irish round tower.” He objects also to the “dog-tooth” and the undercut capitals that often appear in such profusion in France, and which he compares to “exaggerated sticks of rhubarb,” and warns his junior hearers against ornamenting spires with crockets like Salisbury, which he says in that building can only be called a “positive mania” on the part of the architect, and he proclaims loudly against the enrichments in Hereford and Gloucester. Regarding the latter, he says