We may talk as we will of "the domestic shrine," but the architect does not find the kitchen stove an inspiring altar. If it did inspire him, if he began to develop the idea of a kitchen--a temple to Hygeia and Epicurus, a great central altar for the libations and sacrifices, with all appropriate accessories for the contributory labour of the place--he could not make a pocket-edition of this temple, and stick it on to every house in forced connection with the other domestic necessities. The eating-room then confronts him, a totally different _motif_. We do not wish to eat in the kitchen. We do not wish to see, smell, hear, or think of the kitchen while we eat. So the domestic architect is under the necessity of separating as far as possible these discordant purposes, while obliged still to confine them to the same walls and roof. Then come the bedrooms. We do not wish to sleep in the kitchen--or in the dining-room. Nothing is further from our ideals than to confound the sheets with the tablecloths, the bed with the stove, the dressing table with the sink. So again the architect, whose kitchen-tendency was so rudely checked by the dining-room tendency, is brought up standing by the bedroom tendency, its demand for absolute detachment and remoteness, and the necessity for keeping its structural limits within those same walls and roof. Then follows the reception-room tendency--we do not wish to receive our visitors in the kitchen--or the bedroom--or exclusively in the dining-room. So the parlour theme is developed as far as may be, connected with the dining-room, and disconnected as far as possible from all the other life-themes going on under that roof. When we add to these the limits of space, especially in our cities, the limits of money, so almost universal, and the limits of personal taste, we may have clearly before us the reasons why domestic architecture does not thrill the soul with its beauty. Whenever it does, to any extent, the reason is as clear. The feudal castle was beautiful because it had one predominant idea--defence; and was a stone monument to that idea. Here you could have truth, and did have it. Defence was imperative, absolute; every other need was subsidiary; a fine type of castle could give room for unity, simplicity, harmony, and restraint; and stirs us yet to delighted admiration. But it was not a comfortable dwelling-house. A cottage is also capable of giving the sense of beauty; especially an old thatch-roofed cottage; mossy, mouldy, leaky, damp. The cottage is an undifferentiated home; it is primarily a kitchen--with a bedroom or two added--or included! Small primitive houses, like the white, square, flat-roofed dwellings of Algiers, group beautifully, or, taken singly, give a good bit of white against blue fire, behind green foliage.