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ght and skilful manipulation of the artificer, the sashes with muntins an inch and a half in width, glazed with coarse and greenish glass, and the mouldings, all hand-made, showing the wavy lines and irregular sections inseparable from rude hand-work, and then triumphantly asks, "Can your boasted machinery turn out such work as that?" I answer emphatically, No, it cannot; and for this we should be thankful. The colonial mechanics well understood the spirit of Sir Henry Wotton's apt saying, "In architecture, as in all other operative arts, the end is to build well." Would such men have spent their time in hewing out beams of oak ten or twelve inches square by main strength and patience if they had possessed the circular saw driven by steam-power? The weight of these huge beams, of badly-proportioned section, forced to support an overplus of width with comparatively small depth, wrought serious injury to their buildings,--settling floors, irregularly hollowing roofs and ridge-lines, and doing far more than time in rendering these old mansions picturesque and quaint "suggestions" for a revival of "high art." It seems probable that the workmen of the past would have been the first to welcome the advent of machinery and make use of its wide adaptations. At all events, they would never have stooped to the level of the ultra Queen Anne revivalists, who, in striving after the picturesque, have often set well-studied construction at defiance. In this search after quaintness and picturesque effects roofs and ridge-lines are hollowed out with great labor, walls are made to bulge by nailing on furrings beneath the boarding, clear sheet-glass, easily procured of any dimensions, is voted "so inartistic," and the green crown glass and bull's-eyes are taken from some venerable farm-house, where they fitly belonged, to fill the irregular fenestration of a modern parlor. What is the logical sequence of so anomalous a state of domestic architecture? Shall we sand our floors, and design chairs with high backs to break off the draughts from our rattling sashes, from which we have removed the cords and weights? abandon the equable temperature throughout our dwellings for individual fires unassisted by the furnace or steam-coil? revert to the moderator or carcel lamp, casting a dim light over a radius of a few feet and entirely below the level of the eye, and place on our outer doors the old brass knockers to awaken the denizens of a whol
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