“You would almost as soon give up the bay-windows!” Well, you might e’en do worse than that.  Now let your indignation boil.  Bay-windows are very charming things sometimes; sometimes they are nuisances.  Some have been so appropriate and altogether lovely that any pepper box contrivance thrusting itself out from the main walls and looking three ways for Sunday is supposed to be a bower of beauty, a perfect pharos of observation, an abundant recompense for unmitigated ugliness and inconvenience in the rest of the building.  Truly, a well-ordered bay-window will often change a gloomy, graceless room into a cheerful and artistic one, but large, simple windows are sometimes rather to be chosen than too much bay.  In many, perhaps the majority, of cases, it is wiser to extend the whole wall of the room in the form of a half-hexagon or three sides of an octagon, costing no more, and repaying the cost far more abundantly.

While on the subject let us finish it.  If you indulge in a regular bay-window, make it large enough to be of real use; don’t feel constrained to build it with more than fifteen sides; remember that two stories will not cost twice as much as one, while the second is pretty certain to be the pleasanter; don’t carry the ceiling of the main room level and unbroken into the bay, or, because a certain one you may have seen looks well in its place, resolve to have another just like it, regardless of its surroundings.  I sometimes fancy there must be a factory where bay-windows are made for the wholesale trade, all of one style, strictly orthodox, five-sided, bracketed, blinded, painted with striped paint, and ready to barnacle on wherever required.  In the stereotyped pattern the blinds are apt to be troublesome.  If outside, they clash against each other and refuse to be fastened open; while inside they are a mighty maze of folds, flaps, brass buts, and rolling slats.  In the first case, wide piers between the sash are necessary; in the second, boxings for the blinds.  Both require ample room, which, fortunately, you have.  Sixthly, and in conclusion, there is no one feature which may be more charming, combining so much of comfort and beauty, as windows of this class, from the simple opening, pushed forward a few inches beyond the wall face, to the broad extension of the entire room; but there be bays and bays.

Speaking of blinds,—­what shall be done with the other windows?  You will protest against concealing your elegant, single panes of plate-glass by outside blinds,—­it won’t answer to hide your light under a bushel in that way,—­and yet while there is no complete finish without well-arranged inside shutters, they alone are sadly inefficient in rooms with a southern exposure, where light and air are needed.  They may be fitted with boxings, into which they are folded, or arranged to slide into the wall.  I like the old-fashioned boxing, window-seat and all, also the ancient close-panelled shutters.  True they make a room pitch-dark when closed, and