itself is ancient; and the grand effect of the horizontal line was not fully known-despite of Greece and Rometill our interminable lines of railroad had stretched their lengths across the land. In the same way, our more extended and more intimate knowledge of the animal and vegetable kingdom ought to furnish us with an immense variety of new and beautiful forms of ornament-we do not mean of mythic or fanciful ornament, but of that highest and best kind of decoration, absolute, and yet partial, imitation of nature. Thus, for example, have we a blank space, extending horizontally to a long distance, which we desire to cover with enrichments. We have our choice, either in mathematical forms and combination of forms, such as mediæval architects might have applied, or else we may throw along it wreaths and branches of foliage, peopled with insect life, or enlivened by birds and animals. A succession of simple oak-branches or laurelleaves, or the shoots of any other common plants, faithfully imitated, and cut into mimic life, from the inanimate stone, would form an ornament of the most effective kind, and would constitute a work of art, being an intelligent and poetical interpretation of natural beauty. In the building of our houses, why should the straight line and sections of the circle be the only lines admissible for doors, windows, and roofs ? Why should the Greek and Roman ovolo, cavetto, and square, be the only combination that we know of in our common mouldings? How much richer were the architects of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who drew with "free hands," and gave us such exquisite effects of light and shade! We are firmly persuaded, that an architect, deeply imbued with the scientific principles of his profession, and endowed, at the same time, with the hand and the eye of a skilful artist, may cause a most happy and useful reformation of our national architecture.

In our choice of materials for our common buildings, it appears that we are always struggling with a deficiency of pecuniary means: for we never yet met an architect whose skill was not thwarted, in this re

spect, by the necessities of his employer. Such a man would have built a splendid palace, only he was not allowed to use stone; another would have made a inagnificent hall, had he been able to employ oak instead of deal. Whenever people are so situated that they are restricted in their choice of materials, they should remember that they are immediately limited, both in construction and in decorative forms; and, being so limited, it becomes an absurdity in them to aim at any thing that is unreal, any thing that is in fact beyond their means. This has been

one of the curses of all architectural and ornamental art in modern times, that every thing has been imitative, fictitious, sham, make-believe-brick is stuccoed to look like stone, and fir is painted to look like oak. It is impossible for art to flourish when an imitative object can be accepted in the place of original ones; for when once public taste becomes so much vitiated as to be easily satisfied with cheap copies of the real instead of the real itself, the productive faculties of the artist and the manufacturer take a wrong turn, and go directly to increase rather than diminish the evil. On architecture, the effects of a corrupted national desire for the cheap and the easily made are peculiarly disastrous: this being the least suited of all arts to any thing like deception, since, to be good, it must be essentially real and true. Hence it has arisen, that instead of being content with humble brick, and learning how to convert that material to purposes of ornamentation, the use of stucco and cement has become universal-materials totally unsuited to our country and climate. The decorative portion of architecture has fallen into the same track, and elaborate looking things in plaster, and fifty other substances-in the production of which art has had no share-have come to cover our ceilings and our walls. Had not, indeed, the repairs and erection of public buildings called forth the dormant skill of our workmen, decorative art had long since become extinct amongst us. It may therefore be taken as a fundamental rule in architecture, that the decorations of buildings should be made

either of the same materials as the edifices themselves, or that more costly substances should be combined with the former, and should serve for the decorator to exercise his skill on. Thus the combination of stone with brick, an old-fashioned expedient, is good, because it is justified by all the exigencies of constructive skill, and because it is founded on common sense. Look for what effective buildings may be thus produced at Lincoln's Inn, the Temple, St James's, and several of our colleges in the universities: how intrinsically superior are these to the flimsy shabby buildings of Regent Street and its Park even old Buckingham House was good in comparison with some of these. Or go to Hampton Court and Kensington, and see how much grandeur may be produced by proportions and well-combined decoration, without any cement, stucco, or paint, to bedizen the walls. If a man cannot be content to adopt plain brick with such instances as these before his eyes, let him travel forth a little, and see what the effect of the great brick buildings is in Holland, or the south-west of France, where the most admirable churches and public edifices are all erected of this material. Sculptured ornament is of course out of the question in such a case as this: nothing but stone will bear the chisel and mallet to produce any effect that shall satisfy the eye and the judgment of the lover of natural beauty.

We protest strongly against all terra-cotta imitations of sculptural

forms; but for geometrical figure they are allowable, and their stiffness, if justified by sufficient solidity, will be found highly suitable for buildings of such a kind.

Whenever the means of the employer are ample enough, let him make up his mind to sink a little additional capital, and build a good stone house, that shall last him and his family for a couple of centuries, instead of a rickety edifice, that can endure for only a couple of generations. And, in this case, let him call in the decorative aid of the architect, to whatever amount his taste dictates. Ornament, to be effective, need not be abundant; it should be employed sparingly rather than the contrary; and, if kept in its proper place, and limited to its due purposes, it will reward its owner's eye, and will prove a permanent source of artificial satisfaction. Good stone-work without, and good oak-work within, will make a house that a prince may live in. A good house, well built and well decorated, is like a good coatthere is some pleasure in wearing it; it will last long, and look well the whole time; it will bear reparation; and (though we cannot say the same of any short-cut, upper Benjamin, or jacket we ever wore-we wish we could) it will always fetch the price given for it. We have plenty of the finest stone and timber within this snug little island of ours, and it is entirely our own fault that we are not one of the best-built people in the universe.

2 A

VOL. LX. NO. CCCLXXI.

HAD the royal army of Israel been accoutred after the colour and fashion of the British battalions, I am quite satisfied that another enigma would have been added by King Solomon to his special list of incomprehensibilities. The extraordinary fascination which a red coat exercises over the minds and optics of the fair sex, appears to me a greater phenomenon than any which has been noticed by Goethe in his Theory of the Development of Colours. The same fragment of ensanguined cloth will irritate a bull, charm a viper, and bewitch the heart of a woman. No civilian, however good-looking or clean-limbed-and I rather pique myself upon my pinshas the ghost of a chance when opposed in the lists of love to an officer, a mail-guard, a whipper-in, or a postman. You may be as clever a fellow as ever coopered up an article for the Magazine, as great a poet as Byron, in beauty an Antinous, in wit a Selwyn, in oratory a Canning-you may dance like Vestris, draw like Grant, ride like Alexander; and yet, with all these accomplishments, it is a hundred chances to one that your black coat, although fashioned by the shears and polished by the goose of Stultz, will be extinguished by the gaudy scarlet habiliments of a raw-boned ensign, emancipated six months ago, for the first time in his life, from the wilderness of a Highland glen, and even now as awkward a cub as ever presumed to plunge into the perils of a polka.

Let no man, nor woman either, consider these observations flummery or verbiage. They are my calm deliberate opinions, written, it is true, under circumstances of considerable irritation, but nevertheless deliberate. I have no love to the army, for I have been sacrificed for a dragoon. My affections have been slighted, my person vilified, my professional prospects damaged, and my constitution fearfully shaken in consequence of this military mania.

I have made an idiot of my

self in the eyes of my friends and relatives. I have absolutely gone upon the turf. I have lost some valuable inches of epidermis, and every bone of my body feels at the present moment as sore as though I were the sole survivor of a terrific railway collision. A more injured individual than myself never mounted upon a three-legged stool, and from that high altitude I now hurl down defiance and anathemas upon the regulars, be they horse or foot, sappers or miners, artillery, pioneers, or marines!

It was my accursed fate to love, and love in vain. I do not know whether it was the eye or the instep, the form or the voice, of Edith Bogle, which first drew my attention, and finally fascinated my regards, as I beheld her swimming swan-like down the Assembly Rooms at the last Waverley Ball. A more beautiful representative of Die Vernon could not have been found within the boundary of the three kingdoms. Her rich auburn hair flowed out from beneath the crimson network which strove in vain to confine within its folds that bright luxuriant sea-on her brow there lay one pearl, pure as an angel's tear-and oh! sweet even to bewilderment was the smile that she cast around her, as, resting upon the arm of the moody Master of Ravenswood, she floated away-a thing of light-in the mazy current of the waltz! I shall not dwell now upon the circumstances of the subsequent introduction; on the delicious hour of converse at the supper-table; or on the whispered, and—as I flattered myself-conscious adieux, when, with palpitating heart, I veiled her fair shoulders with the shawl, and felt the soft pressure of her fingers as I tenderly assisted her to her chair. I went home that night a lovesick Writer to the Signet. One fairy form was the sole subject of my dreams, and next morning I woke to the conviction, that without Edith Bogle earth would be a wilderness, and even the

bowers of Paradise damp, chilly, and uncomfortable.

There is no comfort in looking back upon a period when hope was high and unchecked. I have met with men who, in their maudlin moments -usually towards the close of the evening-were actuatad by an impulse similar to that which compelled the Ancient Mariner to renew his wondrous tale: and I have heard them on such occasions recount the whole circumstances of their unfortunate wooing with voices choked by grief, and with tears of tender imbecility. I have observed, however, that, on the morrow succeeding such disclosures, these gentlemen have invariably a shy and sheepish appearance, as though inwardly conscious that they had extended their confidence too far, and rather dubious as to the sincerity of their apparent sympathizers. Warned by their example, I hold it neither profitable nor wise to push my own confessions too far. If Edith gave me at the outset more encouragement than she ought to have done if she systematically led me to believe that I had made an impression upon her heart-if she honoured me with a preference so marked, that it deceived not only myself, but others-let the blame be hers. But why should I go minutely into the courtship of half a year? As difficult, indeed, and as futile, would it be to describe the alternations of an April day, made up of sunshine and of shower, of cloud and rainbow and storm-sometimes mild and hopeful, then ominous of an eve of tempest. For a long time, I had not the slightest suspicion that I had a rival. I remarked, indeed, with somewhat of dissatisfaction, that Edith appeared to listen too complacently to the commonplace flatteries of the officers who are the habitual haunters of private ball and of public assembly. She danced too often with Ensign Corkingham, flirted rather openly with Major Chawser, and certainly had no business whatever to be present at a military fête and champagne luncheon given at the Castle by these brave defenders of their country. I was not invited to that fête, and the circumstance, as I well remember, was the cause of a week's

coolness between us. But it was not until Lieutenant Roper of the dragoons appeared in the field that I felt any particular cause for uneasi

ness.

To give the devil his due, Roper was a handsome fellow. He stood upwards of six feet in his boots, had a splendid head of curling black hair, and a mustachio and whiskers to match. His nose was beautifully aquiline, his eyes of the darkest hazel, and a perpetual smile, which the puppy had cultivated from infancy, disclosed a box of brilliant dominoes. I knew Roper well, for I had twice bailed him out of the police-office, and, in return, he invited me to mess. Our obligations, therefore, to each other might be considered as nearly equal-in fact, the balance, if any, lay upon his side, as upon one occasion he had won from me rather more than fifty pounds at ecarté. He was not a bad fellow either, though a little slap-dash in his manner, and somewhat supercilious in his cups; on which occasions-and they were not unfrequent-he was by far too general in his denunciation of all classes of civilians. He was, I believe, the younger son of a Staffordshire baronet, of good connexions, but no money-in fact, his patrimony was his commission, and he was notoriously on the outlook for an heiress. Now, Edith Bogle was rumoured to have twenty thousand pounds.

Judge then of my disgust, when, on my return from a rent-gathering expedition to Argyleshire, I found Lieutenant Roper absolutely domiciled with the Bogles. I could not call there of a forenoon on my way from the Parliament- House, without finding the confounded dragoon seated on the sofa beside Edith, gabbling away with infinite fluency about the last ball, or the next review, or worstedwork, or some similar abomination. I question whether he had ever read a single book since he was at school, and yet there he sat, misquoting Byron to Edith-who was rather of a romantic turn-at no allowance, and making wild work with passages out of Tom Moore's Loves of the Angels. How the deuce he got hold of them, I am unable up to this day to fathom. I suspect he had somehow or other possessed himself of a copy of the