the service of the church. The pure Arabian style is illimitably varied as geometrical combinations themselves; still it is but a crystallization, lacking the life of vegetation. The Japanese style, from which such great things were once hoped, has been resolved into its elements of a mountain, storks, and pyrus japonica; the rest is a sacrifice.

In the hands of an artist at once so inventive and so tasteful as Lady M. Alford, much might have been done with any of these styles. She is never at a loss in adapting her materials to her wish. But she has, doubtless after careful consideration, committed herself to the Italian style of the sixteenth century, though she admires the fifteenth more, and still more the fourteenth; still her possessions bind her to the later period, which she keeps firmly within the limits of fine taste. There is no arrogant connoisseurship, nor dilettanteism, but a comfortable enjoyment of objects "not too bright nor good for human nature's daily food," which yet are elevated by sentiment, endeared by association, and enhanced by fine quality of workmanship.

Most people say, "Of course a great lady turns all this kind of thing over to the decorator," and verily many persons do so, whether great or small people; and it is this idleness and lack of personality that makes most houses so uninteresting.

We cross the corridor to the dining-room, a large

and rather long room. It is at present hung with bluish-green cotton in broad flutings, with excellent effect; but, when finished, it will have white ornaments in stucco on a pale-green ground, with paintings of the Venetian school introduced in the panels. Her ladyship mentions "a few Veroneses, not overvaluable perhaps, but admirably decorative pictures."

The chimney-breast is all of black marble, relieved with white. The smaller fittings are in embossed brass. The verandah of this room looks from beneath a broad awning upon the south garden. The side windows are made pleasant by foliage; the eye falls on a carpet of greenery, chiefly of vines, sustained by a pergola, or scaffolding.

The house is thoughtfully planned; there is no loss of space, no bewilderment, as in our pseudoJacobean houses, no tracasserie, no labyrinth of shady passages. Each floor has a broad corridor for air and comfort, a carpeted gallery long enough to walk and turn in. The broad staircase has a stone balustrade and lunette windows; some of the lunettes are filled with looking-glass. Milanese folding chairs of tarsia-work are placed on the landings.

The back stairs are shut off by doors, but near her own dressing-room Lady M. Alford has contrived a sliding panel which she can easily open to give her orders to the cook; for the kitchen is on this floor, though divided from her private rooms by the corridor.

E

All things needed for the kitchen use go up in the lift.

The state bedrooms face the park and have the large square roof of the fountain-hall for a balcony. Lady M. Alford's own rooms are made delightful, but not crowded with tasteful pleasures. Indeed, the house is no museum of curiosities; there are few trinkets and nick-nacks, and the works of art generally are an integral part of the decoration of the rooms, actually forming part of the walls.

On the ground-floor corridor a stucco plaque is let into the wall. Lady Marian knew it all her life in Rome. One day she missed it, traced it, found it in a shop in a Roman slum ; it was cracked across. She bought it, and here it is. This speaks ill for the Roman municipal authorities. This, and some other things which might otherwise have perished, are well taken care of here, and their loss to Italy is not great, in that they are but agréments, not gems of art.

This house has the charm so many choice houses lack; it is essentially a home: one feels the softening touch of the woman's hand, a woman who will not spoil the fine outline by frivolous minutiæ; but will add the finish, the lady's grace.

Now, if a lady can plan, build, and beautify this heirloom, what do our professional architects learn in their course of study that they cannot give us as good result? This is an example of good use of

the best foreign models without being a copy of any one. We all have the same quarry for our materials; every provincial town in France offers specimens of good domestic architecture for our instruction; there are fine examples in Spain, Flanders, and elsewhere, that we go to see and enjoy; and yet we are contented that our architects should give us drolleries, and our builders give us Queen's Gate!

Alford House is no medley, no olla; in it many thoughts and memories are gathered round one dominant idea. Our next example will show us a building formed of a crowd of beautiful fancies too dissimilar to be welded; a bouquet rather than a flower.*

* Sir Digby Wyatt, who, in the double character of friend and architect, helped Lady M. Alford to build Alford House, was fully alive to the advantage of individualizing every building, and carried out the spirit as well as the letter of every order and suggestion.-[Lady M. A.]

IV.

THE MASTER'S STYLE.

"The hand is the Instrument of Instruments, and the mind is the Form of Forms."-ARISTOTLE.

NDER the trees of Holland Park and round the dwelling of the President of the Royal Academy clusters a group of artists' palaces, and palaces of amateur artists. What more natural? These trees, as we see them through the wrought iron screen, with the bronze fountains engraven and embossed with water-plants and fishes, in front of Fox's statue, and the lordly avenue of elms behind the lodge and gates of Holland House (in themselves a picture), are enough to attract our lovers of beauty; for the quantity of beauty in our London streets is limited: the senate of art also naturally gathers round its president.

The artists' neighbourhood influences the locality.