men's cottages princes' palaces."

_Merchant of Venice_, Act i., Scene ii.

Of all the recognized styles of domestic architecture the position of
modern Queen Anne, or so-called Free Classic, is perhaps the most
difficult to determine. The nomenclature will assist us but little in
investigating its art-history and constructive laws,--the term Queen
Anne being as much too narrow as Free Classic is too broad. If we ask
the professors of architecture and the more learned practitioners of the
art for information on the subject, we shall get vague and
unsatisfactory replies. Many of the younger and more enthusiastic
architects, and the devotees of spinning-wheels, blue India teapots, and
green crown glass will, on the contrary, unhesitatingly tell us that
Queen Anne, is "high art;" forgetting that art had reached its lowest
ebb in England when William and Mary ascended the throne left vacant by
the Stuarts.

With such diversity of sentiment and reasoning, how shall we elucidate
the truth? When did Queen Anne architecture originate, who were its
great masters, under what influence did it spring up, what causes led to
its decline, and to what source may we trace its sudden and aggressive
renaissance? To the student who looks beneath the surface of fashionable
art-culture the Queen Anne and Georgian periods seem almost like a
mirage, where he sees dimly reflected vistas of city streets lined with
tall houses built of red brick, with tiled roofs, long and narrow
sash-windows painted white, and outside shutters painted green. If he
goes to the academies for information, he will be told that early Queen
Anne was a feeble application of Palladian rules designed for palatial
works in marble to smaller edifices built of brick, and that late Queen
Anne is simply a craze that must run its course and then sink into
obscurity, as did its prototype.

This lack of historical data is the more remarkable when we consider
that the style now known as that of Queen Anne is but of yesterday. We
can follow the gradual development of styles and systems of construction
and their transitions into other and later styles, from the Egyptian,
Syrian, Grecian, Roman, and Byzantine, and the wondrous science of the
Middle Ages, to the wealth of Continental Renaissance, but of the style
of Queen Anne we can find little more than the name. England gradually
remodelled her feudal castles into the noble and picturesque
manor-houses of the Tudor king