In a four-roomed house the fourth room may be the servant’s room, if one is kept, a toilet-room, or a reserve room without any definite purpose. A five-roomed house may be taken as the smallest in which a man of the middle class would live. One living in a smaller house may be reckoned among that class; but five rooms are perhaps the fewest in which one can live with comfort if there are not too many children or dependants. A servant would be kept and a room assigned to her, though it would not be exclusively her own as much household work would be done there. The fifth room would be the anteroom or a private room where the family effects, especially the wardrobe, would be kept. Houses with more rooms are pretty numerous; but probably ten rooms may be put as the limit for the middle class proper, if they do not indeed exceed its means. The average size for that class may be given as seven or eight rooms. In such a house there would be, in addition to the three rooms first mentioned, the anteroom, the servant’s room, the room for the wardrobe, and one between the sitting-room and the kitchen or back-entrance where inferior callers, such as tradesmen, artisans, servants’ relatives, or former dependants would be received. The eighth room, if there is one, may be reserved for the father or mother of the master or his wife, who may be staying with them, the master’s private room, the children’s study, or the student’s room. As the rooms, with the exception of the porch, parlour, and perhaps the servant’s room, are not built with a definite object in view, they can be used in any way. This is in a sense convenient; but it has also this disadvantage that the very indefiniteness of their object often makes them inconvenient for any purpose, for in many houses there are rooms which cannot be utilised, sometimes owing to their exposure which makes them too cold or too hot for comfort or too dark to work in, and sometimes by reason of their position which renders them good only for passages from one room to another. [Illustration: THE PORCH, OPEN AND LATTICED.]