contemplate the extraordinary scene that
spreads before you. You find it difficult to
believe life can be so tranquil on high, while
it is so noisy and turbulent, below." One
feature in the prospect especially strikes
Pisistratus:— " What fantastic variety in the
heights and shapes of the chimney-pots!
Some all level in a row, uniform and respectable,
but quite uninteresting; others again,
rising out of all proportion, and imperatively
tasking the reason to conjecture why they are so
aspiring. Imagination steps in, and represents
to you all the fretting and fuming, and worry
and care which the owners of that chimney, now
the tallest of all, endured before, by building
it higher, they got rid of the vapours. You
see the distress of the cook, when the sooty
invader rushed down like a wolf on the fold,
full spring on the Sunday joint. You hear
the exclamations of the mistress (perhaps a
bride-house newly furnished), when, with
white apron and cap, she ventured into the
drawing-room, and was straightway saluted
by a joyous dance of those monads called,
vulgarly, smuts. . . . All this might well
have been, till the chimney-pot was raised a
few feet nearer heaven; and now, perhaps,
that long-suffering family own the happiest
house in the Row."

Pisistratus is right. There is much to be
learned in the house-tops; much that reveals
the habits and customs of the people; much
that depends on the temperature and moisture
of the climate. Shall our house-top be flat or
ridged; shall it have chimney-pots or not?
The answers to these questions depend not so
much on ourselves as on the position of the
country which we inhabit; and the house-top
thus becomes an indicator of natural
characteristics.

Let us call up the old Romans, or, at least,
their house-tops. These house-tops, according
to the evidence yet left to us at Pompeii, were
very odd house-tops indeed, judged by English
habits and English wants. In the best
mansions was a central hall called the atrium,
usually the most splendid apartment in the
house, in which the host received his morning
visitors. This atrium was open to the sky
overhead—not entirely, but so far as regarded
one square compartment called the compluvium,
in the middle of a richly decorated
ceiling. There were no windows to this
atrium; and the light was there admitted
through this aperture. But, even in Italy,
rain falls sometimes; and when rain did fall,
it rattled through this aperture into the
atrium; it was not allowed, however, to
splash about the marble pavement of the
hall, but was caught in a kind of tank called
the impluvium, sunk below the level of the
floor just underneath the aperture. The roof
of such a house was not flat, but inclined from
all sides towards the edges of the
compluvium.

The house-tops in Asia, and in many parts
of Turkey and northern Africa, are living-
rooms, which we can only envy, and do without
as well as we may. The climate being
fine, the weather warm, the sky clear, the
terraced roofs become the most acceptable part
of an eastern house in the evening; and our
travellers have given us abundant descriptions
of these very pleasant house-tops. These flat
roofs are generally covered with plaster, and
are surrounded either by low walls, or by
balustrades. Beauteous ladies and lazy smokers
lounge on these roofs; linen is there hung up
to dry; figs and raisins are there sun-dried;
and the roof is also a frequent oratory or
place of devotion. In Asia Minor, and many
other parts of Asiatic Turkey, the inmates of
houses are very much accustomed to sleep on
the terraced house-tops, so genial are the sky
and climate of those regions; and thus two
open-air bed-rooms are only separated by a
wall between two adjoining roofs. The
European dwellers in those cities do not often
thus go to bed al fresco, and they, therefore,
have no such urgent need of screening walls
between the roofs of adjacent houses. There
are often doors of communication in these
walls, and thus an inhabitant might roam
over a wide area of the city on the flat roof
of his neighbours' houses. These Orientals
take great care of their flat-terraced roofs;
they employ tar, ashes, sand, lime, and
straw—some or all of these—and endeavour
sedulously to make of these a mortar or
cement which shall bear the weight of walkers,
and shield the rooms beneath.

Doctor Kitto has brought his Oriental knowledge
to bear upon a curious inquiry concerning
the house-tops of that part of the East to
which the bible narrative chiefly refers. A
palsied man was " let down through the
tiling " from the house-top. How was this-
effected, and over what kind of area was the
tiling placed? After noticing the suggested
explanations of many commentators, Dr. Kitto
gives his own, which throws much light upon
the domestic architecture of the East.
Supposing, he says, the house to have a central
court, the buildings around it have, on the
ground floor, cellars, offices, store-rooms, and
servants'-rooms; all the better apartments
being above them. All these better apartments
open into a gallery, from five to eight
feet wide, and fronting the court, having a
roof, a floor of squared stones, and a strong
wooden balustrade in front. The roof of the
gallery is on a level with that of the house
itself; but the two are very different in
character. The roof of the house has no
tiling, no thatch, no lath and plaster; it is
usually composed of reeds, branches, and
twigs laid over the rafters, the whole trodden
into a somewhat compact mass, and covered
externally with earth or plaster, more or less
tempered. The roof of the gallery, however,
is far less firm and substantial; it is built of
slight materials, and in a slight manner, being
intended merely to cover the gallery beneath,
whereas the flat terraced roof of the house is