The architecture of the building is Græco-Italian. It consists of an
entrance or ground story, with semicircular headed windows and rusticated
piers. A continued pedestal above the arches of these windows runs
through the composition, divided between the columns into balustrades, in
front of the windows of the principal story, to which they form handsome
balconies. The elegant windows of this and the principal chamber story
are of the Ilissus Ionic, and are decorated with a colonnade, completed
with a well-proportioned entablature from the same beautiful order. Mr.
Elmes, in his critical observations on this terrace, thinks the attic
story "too irregular to accompany so chaste a composition as the Ionic,
to which it forms a crown;" he likewise objects to the cornice and
blocking-course, as being "also too small in proportion for the majesty
of the lower order."

York Terrace is from the design of Mr. Nash, whose genius not
unfrequently strays into such errors as our architectural critic has
pointed out.

* * * * *


VALENTINE CUSTOMS.

_(To the Editor of the Mirror.)_


As some of the customs described by your correspondent W.H.H.[1] are left
unaccounted for, I suppose any one is at liberty to sport a few
conjectures on the subject. May not, for instance, the practice of
burning the "_holly boy_" have its origin in some of those rustic