Successive eras of suburb-rearing are most readily to be noted. First come the red-bricked suburbs still in the making; then those of the '60's and the '70's, brown-bricked and grey-stuccoed; and then the settlements of a period ranging from 1840 to 1860, contrived in a fashion fondly supposed to represent Italian villas, characteristically constructed of lath and plaster now very much the worse for wear, but at one time wearing a spick-and-span appearance that would have delighted Macaulay, to whom the sight of a row of "semi-detached suburban residences" gave visions of progress and prosperity that seem to us inexpressibly vulgar. The sight of wealthy tradesfolk and of plutocratic contractors seems to have warmed Macaulay into an enthusiasm which became eloquent in enlarging upon the rows of villas that encircle every great town. To him the ostentatious surroundings of the despicable rogues--the typical contractors of the early and mid-Victorian epoch--who contracted to supply hay and fodder for our armies in the Crimea, and forwarded in their consignments a large proportion of bricks and rotten straw--the vulgar display of men of this stamp recalled the most prosperous times of the ancient Romans, and was therefore to be approved. But these men have long since left their lath-and-plaster fripperies for a place where (let us hope) their bricks and their rotten straw will be remembered against them, and their descendants have mounted on the heaps of their inherited money to a very high social scale indeed. The eligible residences themselves, with their "grounds," are mostly to be let, and the firesides across which unctuous purveyors and middlemen and their wives grinned at one another and ate buttered toast at tea-time, and drank "sherry wine" at night, are cold. Following upon this suburban stratum come the egregious houses of the Regency period: pseudo-classic houses these, bay-windowed and approached by steep flights of stone steps surmounted by ridiculously skimpy little porches, with attenuated neo-classic pillars and pediments, done in wood. Some of these are gone--pulled down to make room for shops--and doubtless many more will shortly go the same way. Let us hope one or two will be preserved for all time, for, although by no means beautiful, they are interesting as tending to show the manners of a period now removed from us by nearly a century; the taste in domestic architecture of a time when the First Gentleman in Europe ruled the land. [Sidenote: _'ROADS' v. 'STREETS'_]