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Rh an old house that strikes us as "architectural," though it may not contain a single item of architectural ornament; and, in the very few instances in which modern buildings have been raised in the same fashion, the beholder at once feels that their generous regard for the far future is of almost as poetical a character as the aged retrospect of a similar house of the time of Henry VII. or Elizabeth. A man," he goes on, "now hires a bit of ground for eighty or ninety years; and, if he has something to spare to spend on beauty, he says to himself: 'I will build me a house that will last my time, and what money I have to spare I will spend in decorating it. Why should I waste my means in raising wall and roof which will last five times as long as I or mine shall want them?' The answer is: Because that very 'waste' is the truest and most striking ornament; and though your and your family's enjoyment of a house thus magnanimously built may last but a tenth of its natural age, there lies in that very fact an 'ornament' of the most noble and touching kind, which will be obvious at all seasons to yourself and every beholder, though the consciousness of its cause may be dormant; whereas the meanness of the other plan will be only the more apparent with every penny you spend in making it meretricious."

Again, are you likely to get so good an architectural design where you cannot be fairly sure that the use for which the building is raised is likely to be permanent? And do our modern