feet high, and are lighted from windows in surprising places, and of the
oddest shapes. What more charming than this variety, to the eye jaded
with monotony; what more suggestive, than the apparently accidental
application of Gothic architecture to the wants and requirements of the
age.[7]

We will not venture to say that these old buildings are altogether
admirable from an architect's point of view, but to us they are
delightful, because they were designed and inhabited by people who had
time to be quaint, and could not help being picturesque. And if these
old wooden houses seem to us wanting (as many are wanting) in the
appliances and fittings which modern habits have rendered necessary, it
was assuredly no fault of the 15th-century architect. They display both
in design and construction, most conspicuously, the elements of common
sense in meeting the requirements of their own day, which is, as has
been well remarked, "the one thing wanting to give life to modern
architecture;" and they have a character and individuality about them
which renders almost every building unique. Like furniture of rare
design they bear the direct impress of their maker. They were built in
an age of comparative leisure, when men gave their hearts to the
meanest, as well as to the mightiest, work of their hands; in an age
when love, hope, and a worthy emulation moved them, as it does not seem
to move men now; in an age, in short, when an approving notice in the
columns of the 'Builder' newspaper, was not a high aspiration.

But in nothing is the attraction greater to us, who are accustomed to
the monotonous perspective of modern streets, than the irregularity of
the _exteriors_, arising from the independent method of construction;
for, by varying the height and pattern of each façade, the builders
obtained to almost every house what architects term the 'return,' to