Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/400

386 or relief ornament, can be made as imposing as you like, while balcony fronts can be of good wrought-iron, like some of those in the old picturesque towns of Spain and Germany, instead of lumpy and heavy with balustrading, which not only shuts out light from the rooms, but suggests an element of danger by their utterly false and generally insufficient construction; but I confess to a feeling of astonishment when I see friezes and cornices of buildings in narrow streets, some forty or fifty feet from the street-level, covered with elaborate carving and enrichment which it is impossible even to look at without craning the neck, and which can only be appreciated by the servants who inhabit the attics over the way. There is no possible reason why street frontages should not be made picturesque and beautiful instead of tame and ugly, and the commonest of fronts can often be redeemed by some good bit of detail and decoration in the shape of red brick, terra-cotta, or glazed faience. Picturesque fronts, with projecting oriels or bays and gabled roofs, need cost no more than some of these wretched travesties of Italian or French architecture, with so-called Mansard-roofs and cramped dormer lights, and would give grace and charm, and color, where now commonplaceness, vulgarity, and bad taste reign supreme.

Too often the first principles of proportion are lost sight of, owing to the want of proper culture of the eye, and details which might be well suited to a Genoese or Roman palace are stuck on to a narrow street frontage.

There is no need why London street architecture should not embody every modern improvement, and be carried out in a common-sense and picturesque style, suitable for every-day wants, and in conformity with all the various scientific principles of sanitation which the nineteenth century has produced, "instead of resuscitating old forms and old features, which our forefathers would have gladly changed" had they had the knowledge or benefit of modern improvements. I have no desire to see any one uniform style of building, but, whatever style is taken up by the individual owner, it is first of all essential that it should be made to adapt itself to the internal requirements, and that there be ample light, and common-sense treatment of the window-spaces, so that they be arranged in the rooms in proper places, and not thrust into corners, or raised so high from the floors as to be prison-like, to suit the external design; and whether Greek, Italian, Queen Anne, or any date or period of so-called Gothic art, it must be governed by present wants, and possess every sanitary and modern invention which may make the individual house more comfortable, more healthy, and more convenient for the purposes for which it is required.

Renaissance, whether German, Italian, or French, freely or simply treated, and all the later phases of the Jacobean and English Elizabethan periods, are capable of being successfully adapted to present home-life and modern requirements.