conscientiously at least, and if they have little or no beauty, yet
have a certain common-sense and convenience about them; nor do they
fail to represent the manners and feelings of their own time. The
earliest of these, built about the reign of Queen Anne, stretch out
a hand toward the Gothic times, and are not without picturesqueness,
especially when their surroundings are beautiful. The latest built
in the latter days of the Georges are certainly quite guiltless of
picturesqueness, but are, as above said, solid, and not
inconvenient. All these houses, both the so-called Queen Anne ones
and the distinctively Georgian, are difficult enough to decorate,
especially for those who have any leaning toward romance, because
they have still some style left in them which one cannot ignore; at
the same time that it is impossible for any one living out of the
time in which they were built to sympathise with a style whose
characteristics are mere whims, not founded on any principle. Still
they are at the worst not aggressively ugly or base, and it is
possible to live in them without serious disturbance to our work or
thoughts; so that by the force of contrast they have become bright
spots in the prevailing darkness of ugliness that has covered all
modern life.

But we must not forget that that rebellion which we have met here, I
hope, to further, has begun, and to-day shows visible tokens of its
life; for of late there have been houses rising up among us here and
there which have certainly not been planned either by the common
cut-and-dried designers for builders, or by academical imitators of
bygone styles. Though they may be called experimental, no one can
say that they are not born of thought and principle, as well as of
great capacity for design. It is nowise our business to-night to
criticise them. I suspect their authors, who have gone through so