tance of proportions, but the main point
generally is that the house be not too high. This is the most universal
difficulty, particularly in small houses, the area being diminished, but
not the height of stories. In this respect the old farm-houses had a
great advantage, and this is a main element in their good effect,--aided
as it is by the height of the roof; for a high roof will often make a
building seem lower than it would with a low roof or none at all. The
dreary effect of the flat-roofed houses in the neighborhood of New York
is due partly to the unrelieved height, and partly to the unfinished or
truncated appearance of a thing without a top. The New York fashion
gives, no doubt, the most for the money; but the effect is so offensive
that I think it justifies us for once in violating Mr. Garbett's canon
and sacrificing efficiency to taste.

The most pleasing shape of roof, other things being equal, is the
pyramidal or hipped, inclining from all sides towards the centre. The
drawback is, that, if it must be pierced by windows, their lines will
stick off from the roof, so that, as seen from below, they will be
violently detached from the general mass. The good taste of the old
builders made them avoid putting dormer-windows (at least in front) in
roofs of one pitch; the windows were in the gables, carried out for this
purpose; or if dormers were necessary, they made a mansard or
double-pitched roof, in which the windows are less detached. Another
excellent feature in the old New-England farm-houses is the long slope
of the roof behind, and, in general, the habit of roofing porches,
dormers, sheds, and other projections by continuing the main roof over
them, with great gain to breadth and solidity of effect.

In fact, were it possible, we could not do better for the outside than
to take these old houses for our model. But here, as everywhere, we find
the outside depends on the inside, and that what we most admire in them
will conflict with the new requirements. For instance, the massive
central chimney and the expanse on the ground point to the kitchen as
the common living-room of the family; they are irreconcilable with our
need of more chambers and of the possibility of more separation above
and below. The later and more ambitious houses, such as were built in
the neighborhood of Boston at the beginning of the century, come nearer
to our wants; but they sacrifice too much to a cut-and-dried symmetry to
be of muc