cool, and airy looking; and as lofty as possible within reason
and common sense. The ceiling should be of a light tone. A lantern-light
where the light may come in, rather than be seen, and where the vitiated
air may go out, is a pleasant and useful addition.

Points for emphasising with a view to ultimate effect are the stairs to
hot rooms--if a staircase be needed--the divans or screens for couches,
and an ornamental fountain as above described. The staircase may be
rendered attractive with bowl newels, and perhaps white marble treads to
the stairs. The divans may be rendered things of beauty by designing
ornamental, open-work wood partitions, in either an Oriental style or
otherwise. It is not easy to make small dwarf partitions, enclosing a
couple of couches, look handsome. As a rule, they are of a flimsy and
gimcrack order of architecture. They should be made as solid as
possible. For effect there is nothing better than prettily-designed
divans.

As regards style, I do not see why one method of design should be more
suited than another for the bath. Having become popularly known as the
"Turkish" bath, an Eastern or Saracenic style has been often adopted in
the past. And, inasmuch as such style is essentially an interior style
of architecture, there is something to be said on this score. It is,
moreover, a style in which surface decoration pertains rather than
modelled work, or, at least, the modelling is in very low relief. There
is yet ample scope for the display of skill in the design of a bath in
an Oriental style, as hitherto such attempts have only been made in a
half-hearted manner; and in many smaller commercial baths the unskilful
use of the style has vulgarised it to no small extent.[3]

Considering that the old Romans brought the bath to a great pitch of
excellence--far, very far, I should be inclined to say, in advance of
our present knowledge of the subject--their style of architecture would
seem fitted to its design at this day; and for large public baths,
larger than any yet erected in this country, one can imagine that a very
interesting design could be made in the Roman style, founded on a study
of the old baths, and, for the sake of the interest attaching to them,
reproducing many of the original mosaics, pictures, details, &c., of the
public baths of the time of the Empire. In a like manner in the Moorish
style one could obtain a very elegant effect by a careful study of old
baths in Eastern co