“Of domestic architecture what need is there to speak!  How small, how cramped, how poor, how miserable in its petty meanness, is our best!  How beneath the mark of attack and the level of contempt, that which is common with us!”

Thus Mr. Ruskin on the domestic architecture of England.  What would that merciless critic say, or rather what profundity of silence would he employ to express his opinion, of ours?  It will be well for him and for us if he holds to his resolve never to visit America.  This servile spirit of imitation, blind following of blind guides, is by no means confined to the outsides of our houses; it not only penetrates the interiors, but more or less influences all our affairs.  Charge me with a professional interest if you will, I assure you no man can, in justice to himself or the community, build a house for his own use just like any other.  He must attempt something better adapted to his needs and tastes than that can be which precisely suits some one else.  If he can give no better reason for building as he builds, for furnishing as he furnishes, for living and thinking as he lives and thinks, than that another has done so before him, he may serve for the shadow of a man, but will never make the substance.  Eastlake, another English authority, refers to continental cities and villages “the first glimpse of which is associated with a sense of eye-pleasure which is utterly absent in our provincial towns.”  And then, to drain the dregs of our humiliation, we are asked by his American editor to believe that, nevertheless, certain towns of the British Isles are miracles of picturesqueness “as compared with American towns, which have nothing but a succession of tame, monotonously ugly, and utterly uninteresting streets and squares to offer to the wearied eye.”  Yes, I am anxious about the outside of the house, but do not for a moment forget that it should always be subordinate to the weightier matters, the higher and holier uses of “home buildings.”

[Illustration:  “Picturesque America.”]

Have I squared up your point?  Let us return to the trowel.

The somewhat vexed question of mortar you shall answer according to your taste, so far as to choose between dark gray—­“black” it is commonly called—­and some shade of red, resembling the brick used.  Between these two there seems to me to be one of those questions of taste, concerning which we are not permitted to dispute.  With the dark mortar the joints will be visible, modifying the color of the wall, in some cases, perhaps, improving it; while the red will give a more uniform tint, on which not only colored brick or stone will appear to the best advantage, but the lines of the openings and other essential details are brought out in clearer relief.  You would perhaps expect coloring the mortar the same shade as the brick to give precisely the effect of painting the entire wall.  But it is not so.  As in wood or stone, though in less