buildings in Oxford.  In All Souls College, for instance, the architect has carried his chimneys half as high as all the rest of the building, and fretted them with Gothic.  The eye is instantly caught by the plated candlestick-like columns, and runs with some complacency up the groining and fret-work, and alights finally and fatally on a red chimney-top.  He might as well have built a Gothic aisle at an entrance to a coal wharf.  We have no scruple in saying that the man who could desecrate the Gothic trefoil into an ornament for a chimney has not the slightest feeling, and never will have any, of its beauty or its use; he was never born to be an architect, and never will be one.

65.  Now, if chimneys are not to be decorated (since their existence is necessary), it becomes an object of some importance to know what is to be done with them:  and we enter into the inquiry before leaving the cottage, as in its most proper place; because, in the cottage, and only in the cottage, it is desirable to direct attention to smoke.

Speculation, however, on the beau ideal of a chimney can never be unshackled; because, though we may imagine what it ought to be, we can never tell, until the house is built, what it must be; we may require it to be short, and find that it will smoke, unless it is long; or, we may desire it to be covered, and find it will not go unless it is open.  We can fix, therefore, on no one model; but by looking over the chimneys of a few nations, we may deduce some general principles from their varieties, which may always be brought into play, by whatever circumstances our own imaginations may be confined.

66.  Looking first to the mind of the people, we cannot expect to find good examples of the chimney, as we go to the south.  The Italian or the Spaniard does not know the use of a chimney, properly speaking; they have such things, and they light a fire, five days in the year, chiefly of wood, which does not give smoke enough to teach the chimney its business; but they have not the slightest idea of the meaning or the beauty of such things as hobs, and hearths, and Christmas blazes; and we should, therefore, expect, a priori, that there would be no soul in their chimneys; that they would have no practiced substantial air about them; that they would, in short, be as awkward and as much in the way, as individuals of the human race are, when they don’t know what to do with themselves, or what they were created for.  But in England, sweet carbonaceous England, we flatter ourselves we do know something about fire, and smoke too, or our eyes have strangely deceived us; and, from the whole comfortable character and fireside disposition of the nation, we should conjecture that the architecture of the chimney would be understood, both as a matter of taste and as a matter of comfort, to the ne plus ultra of perfection.  Let us see how far our expectations are realized.