ng curtains, the easels in the corner, the great
portfolios--the well-known "effects" were absent.

A plain room, not even with a north light, plain old furniture, but not
very old--not ostensibly ancient, somewhere about 1790 say--and this
inherited and not purchased; Flamma cared not one atom for furniture,
itself, old or new; dusty books everywhere, under the table, on the
mantelpiece, beside the coal scuttle; heaps on chairs, quartos on the
sofa, crowds more in his bedroom, besides the two bookcases and drawers;
odd books most of them, Cornelius Agrippa, _Le Petit Albert_, French
illustrated works, editions of Faust, music, for Flamma was fond of his
many-keyed flute.

Great people once now and then called and asked to see Alere Flamma at
the business place in Fleet Street; people with titles, curiously out of
place, in the press-room, gold leaf on the floor, odour of printer's
ink, dull blows of machinery, rotten planking, partitions pasted over
with illustrations and stained with beer, the old place trembling as the
engine worked; Flamma, in his shirt-sleeves, talking to "His
Excellency."

Flamma's opinion, information he could give, things he knew; abroad they
thought much of him.

Presents came occasionally--a boar's head from Germany; fine Havana
cigars--Alere always had a supply of the best cigars and Turkish
tobacco, a perennial stream of tobacco ran for him; English venison;
once a curious dagger from Italy, the strangest present good-natured
Alere could possibly have received!

Sometimes there came a pressing invitation from a noble connoisseur to
his country seat; Flamma's views were wanted about the re-arrangement of
the library, the re-binding of some treasure picked up in a cover all
too poor for its value, the building of another wing, for the artist is
the true architect, as the princes of Italy knew of old time. Till the
artist is called in we shall never again see real architecture in the
world. Did not Benvenuto design fortifications? Did not Michael Angelo
build St. Peter's at Rome?

If my lord duke wants a palace he cannot have it till he calls in the
artist, the Alere Flamma, to draw it for him; if my lord bishop needs a
cathedral he cannot have it till he calls in the poet-draughtsman, till
he goes to Alere Flamma.

Our so-called architects are mere surveyors, engineers, educated
bricklayers, men of hard straight ruler and square, mathematically
accurate, and utterly devoid of feeling.