All these types of Colonial architecture possess an healthy, indigenous flavour that smacks of the manly vigour and robust hardihood of the pioneers who had the courage and the initiative to forsake their wonted paths of comfort and known conditions at home and face unflinchingly the dangers and difficulties of an untamed wilderness as the founders of a settlement whose future was by no means assured and of whose ultimate greatness they little dreamed. This tone of staunch, native originality was due to the local forms, evolved in response to local exigencies, dictated by resourceful motherwit and engrafted upon an inherited stock of architectural traditions which the first settlers, hailing from this or that part of the old world, had brought hither with them. In other words, it was the logical and necessary outcome of architectural precedent, modified by contact with a new environment, and all its forms are clearly traceable to typical antecedents on the other side of the Atlantic. Edward Eggleston has somewhere said that “it is difficult for the mind of man to originate, even in a new hemisphere.” He is oftentimes coerced into originality by force of circumstances. So it was in our early architectural efforts. The first settlers followed tradition so far as they could and essayed original departures only under stress of necessity or expediency. While the several forms were full of the grace that was inherent in the early builders’ spirit of construction and design, they were also strong because they were so thoroughly utilitarian and because nearly every feature was produced in response to some specific local need. The vital quality of the early and truly Colonial architecture has not been exhausted and after nearly three hundred years we turn to it to find it still rich in adaptability to many of our present requirements. Owing to its essentially utilitarian characteristics, Colonial architecture in all its forms is wholly unpretentious, informal, and, one might almost say, fortuitous, but it suited the manners and estate of the majority of the people for whom it was devised. On the other hand, formality, as an element in American architecture, came in with the advent of the Georgian influence. For the most part it was not a chilling, hard, rigid formality but rather the formality of ordered symmetry and concurrence with the elegant genius and refinement of classic architectural conventions. It was, if one chooses so to put it, formality tempered with domesticity and common sense. The American colonists of the eighteenth century adopted the Georgian style, when they were able to afford it and had acquired the desire for it, and adapted it to their own ends. These adaptations took shape in divergent forms in the several parts of the Colonies, exhibiting certain local peculiarities in New England and others quite as distinct [Illustration: PINGREE OR WHITE PORTICO. SALEM, MASS.