But I say--

LECTOR. What rhodomontade and pedantry is this talk about the shape of
a window?

AUCTOR. Little friend, how little you know! To a building windows are
everything; they are what eyes are to a man. Out of windows a building
takes its view; in windows the outlook of its human inhabitants is
framed. If you were the lord of a very high tower overlooking a town,
a plain, a river, and a distant hill (I doubt if you will ever have
such luck!), would you not call your architect up before you and say--

'Sir, see that the windows of my house are _tall, narrow, thick_, and
have a _round top to them'?_

Of course you would, for thus you would best catch in separate
pictures the sunlit things outside your home.

Never ridicule windows. It is out of windows that many fall to their
deaths. By windows love often enters. Through a window went the bolt
that killed King Richard. King William's father spied Arlette from a
window (I have looked through it myself, but not a soul did I see
washing below). When a mob would rule England, it breaks windows, and
when a patriot would save her, he taxes them. Out of windows we walk
on to lawns in summer and meet men and women, and in winter windows
are drums for the splendid music of storms that makes us feel so
masterly round our fires. The windows of the great cathedrals are all
their meaning. But for windows we should have to go out-of-doors to
see daylight. After the sun, which they serve, I know of nothing so
beneficent as windows. Fie upon the ungrateful man that has no
window-god in his house, and thinks himself too great a philosopher to
bow down to windows! May he live in a place without windows for a
while to teach him the value of windows. As for me, I will keep up the
high worship of windows till I come to the windowless grave. Talk to
me of windows!

Yes. There are other things in St Ursanne. It is a little tiny town,
and yet has gates. It is full of very old houses, people, and speech.
It was founded (or named) by a Bear Saint, and the statue of the saint
with his bear is carved on the top of a column in the market-place.
But the chief thing about it, so it seemed to me, was its remoteness.

The gorge of the Doubs, of which I said a word or two above, is of
that very rare shape which isolates whatever may be found in such
valleys. It turns right back upon itself, like a very narrow U, and
thus cannot by any possibility lead any one anywhere; for though in
all