glory. What visions of dwarf magnificence of
cheap and cracking splendour, of unsupported
sponginess and crumbling insecurity, rise up
before the mind that recals that thoroughfare
from Waterloo-place to Langham Church: a
triumph of littleness, of base and misplaced
economy! The great thoroughfare, a mile or so
long, is a standing monument of warning against
a half-done work. It is a warning against
compromise, and against a fearful acceptance.
Whatever we accept at all we should accept
thoroughly, boldly, and with all that it involves.
This truth is more important than it seems, and
there are other things at stake in connexion with
it besides the beauty and stability of our town.
To accept a great scheme, but to stunt and clip
it in its development, is a timid and miserable
weakness, yet one into which we in this country
are very apt to fall. An enormous outlay,
consistently, unflinchingly, but judiciously
disbursed, is the way to secure enormous
repayment. A timid outlay, a half-liberality,
is always extravagant and unremunerative.
But it will be asked what are you to do if
you have not the means of making this great
venture, and of carrying the splendid design
splendidly out? The answer is a simple one. It
is the history of many of the greatest achievements
which the world has known—Persist.
Adopt the plan, carry out as much of it as you
can carry out perfectly, and go on adding to
it as your means allow. Or, if the thing to be
performed must of necessity be done quickly,
then it is necessary to make a great sacrifice of
means at once, holding on till the repayment
comes, or else to do as great traders do—
mortgage the future, and become hampered with a
temporary loan in the full confidence of an
ultimate triumph.

Comparison, though odious, is the surest of
tests—nay, perhaps it is because of its
sureness in that capacity that it is odious. Let
any one remember his first walk down Regent-
street after a return from Paris, and he will at
once see how far the English thoroughfare is
from being what it ought to be. Nay, compare
this street with some recently built, or some
portions of those recently built, in the City.
This business-like part of our capital furnishes
an example in this respect to the gay West-end.

The splendour of a street depends greatly
on height in the houses of which it is
composed. Nay, what is more remarkable yet, a
street bordered by low houses will not look
even so wide, as one of the same breadth whose
houses are high. A large room which is lofty,
will look larger than a room the same size which
has a low ceiling; and a tall man who is very
stout as well as tall, will look taller than
a man of the same height who is thin. The
immense houses in Cannon-street by no means
narrow that thoroughfare, but, on the contrary,
add to its spaciousness of appearance, and seem,
strangely enough, to afford a breathing space of
greater magnitude than is afforded by the
dwarfed habitations in Regent-street. The tall
houses seem to fetch down, and enclose for your
use, a larger space of air than the short ones do.
You take no account of the air above the
housetops.

In reviewing the past history, the present
condition, and the future prospects, of what may
be called the domestic architecture of our
town, it is impossible not to be struck with the
conviction of a dire decline, and a recent
revival of taste. The old specimens which still
remain in different parts of our town—we should
have many more but for that fatal fire—the old
gabled houses of the Elizabethan time, projecting
forward story by story to the top or the
house, are picturesque and delightful. In
the time which succeeded—the Whitehall
period—there is still infinite satisfaction to be
derived from the grey stone buildings,
ornamented with stone garlands, or sometimes even
with palms of glory tied together by the handles.
There is a certain mansion so decorated, facing
the Green Park, and next on the north side to
the palace of the Earl of Ellesmere. The palms
lie underneath a circular window in the middle
of the pediment; the whole effect of which
arrangement is admirable, as is indeed everything
about that house, with its stone pillars, its
terrace with balustrades, and—most attractive of
all decorations—its atmosphere of past associations
gathering before it and beautifying its
every stone. Let any one turn his back for a
moment on this building, and look across at
Buckingham Palace, and he will see that mere
size is not alone and in itself impressive. There
are such houses as this Green Park mansion, in
nooks and corners about London, that you light
upon by chance after a thirty years' residence in
tie town. At the bottom of Davies-street, and
not many yards from the Berkeley-square end of
Mount-street, there is one of these out-of-the-
way houses, of a period probably just after that
last named, and which is called Bourdon House.
For a compact and jovial little lump of masonry,
this quaint mansion, with its red-brick facings,
its high roof, and its little enclosed court-yard
of trees, has hardly its equal anywhere.

In the time of Anne, and afterwards, when the
rows of red-brick houses, with white sashes to
the windows which are flush with the wall,
prevailed, there was still a comfortable and solid
look about the streets which was pleasant to the
eye. Such rows of houses are to be seen in
Queen-square, Bloomsbury; in King's Bench-
walk, Temple; and in many other localities.
If destitute of pretension to beauty, they are still
pleasant to look at, and infinitely refreshing in
comparison with the race of uncharacteristic
tenements which succeeded them, and with a
consideration of which this paper began.

It is a pleasant thing to know tnat we are
now, architecturally speaking, in a hopeful way;
not only in the matter of Public Buildings, but
in the generally improved taste which shows
itself here and there in individual houses, and
which tells us plainly that were our town to
build again, we should have no more such streets
as Regent-street, no more such squares as
Trafalgar-square.