houses the stories were very low, often less than eight feet in the best
rooms. In favor of low rooms it is to be remembered that they are more
easily lighted and warmed, and involve less climbing of stairs. Rooms
are often made lofty under the impression that better ventilation is
thereby secured; but there is a confusion here. A high room is less
intolerable without ventilation, the vitiated air being more diluted;
but a low room is usually more easily ventilated, because the windows
are nearer the ceiling.

Mr. Garbett advises that the windows be many and small. This costs more;
and if it be understood to involve placing the windows on different
sides, the effect, I think, will be generally less agreeable than where
the room is lighted wholly from one side. A capital exception, however,
is the dining-room, which should always, if possible, abound in
cross-lights; else one half the table will be oppressed by a glare of
light, and the other visible only in _silhouette_.

As to material, stone is the handsomest, and the only one that
constantly grows handsomer, and does not require that your creepers
should be periodically disturbed for painting or repairs. But this is
perhaps all that can be said in its favor. To make a stone house as good
as a wooden one we must build a wooden one inside of it. Wood is our
common material, and there is none better, if we take the pains to make
it tight. There is a prevalent notion that it is the thinness of our
cheap wooden houses that makes them pervious to heat and cold. But no
wooden house, unless built of solid and well-fitted logs, could resist
the external temperature by virtue of thickness. It is tightness that
tells here. Wherever air passes, heat and cold pass with it. What is
important, therefore, is, by good contrivance and careful execution, to
stop all cracks as far as possible. For this, an outside covering of