We should naturally look to New York for representative works of the Dutch William and Queen Anne schools, but the march of improvement and demolition has been so universal in that city that few examples remain of the domestic architecture of New Amsterdam. Philadelphia will, however, supply us with much valuable material to reward our investigations. In the latter city the Dutch-English school became firmly established. Many of the old buildings of the colonial period still remain, and our attention is frequently drawn to some interesting example while strolling through that portion of the city lying to the east of Tenth Street. These edifices, both public and domestic, are generally of brick construction, showing all the marked peculiarities of English work of the period. The bricks are in nearly every instance laid up with the Flemish bond. The gable-ends are stepped, as in the Netherlands; string-moulds and base-courses made of moulded bricks of good section are often met with; while the whole character and aspect of their facades are in unison with the conservatism and early training of the mechanics who erected them. This conservatism and respect for the ways of their predecessors still exert a powerful influence upon the building-industries of Philadelphia. The masons of that city still cling with reverence to the Flemish system of bonding,--the strongest known to the bricklayer. The planning of the dwelling-houses is different, so far as I am conversant with them, from the system in vogue in any other American city. The varied levels of floors in the "front" and "back" buildings has been tenaciously adhered to by the designers of each generation. This variety in levels gives a rambling, homely effect which is very pleasing, and which is capable of being developed into the highest expression of domestic convenience and artistic elegance of which our modern Queen Anne is capable. Of the public buildings, Christ Church, St. Peter's Church, Independence Hall, Carpenters' Hall, and some others, represent, I think, the best type of Queen Anne or Georgian architecture to be met with in colonial work. Their designers seem to have been thoroughly in earnest, and the details are marked by conscientious adherence to the established precedents of the time. It was this thorough knowledge of precedent as applied to mass and detail which enabled their designers to grasp boldly the problems before them, and, while not departing from the academic system in which they had been trained, to infuse into each separate building which they erected a dignity and an individuality of its own. AESTHETIC QUALITIES. Having thus followed Queen Anne architecture through the various phases of its development, it remains only to refer to its claim to artistic excellence, and answer, if possible, the question frequently asked: Is Queen Anne "high art"?