as the kind and the amount of his possessions, and no more so. The
style of it, depending on the inherited ideas of the class to
which he belongs, will be as formed and as fixed as that class.
Then where there is no fixed class, and where the property of
every man is constantly varying, our quantity will be just so
variable, and the true type of our architecture will be the
tent,--of the frame-and-clapboard variety suited to the climate.

For good architecture, then, we need castes in society, and fixed
ways of living. We see the effect in the old parsonages in England,
where from year to year have dwelt men of the same class, education,
income, tastes, and circumstances generally, and so bringing from
generation to generation nearly the same requirements, with the
unessential changes brought in from time to time by new wants or
individual fancies, here and there putting out a bay-window or
adding a wing, but always in the spirit of the original building,
and the whole getting each year more weather-stained and ivy-grown,
and so toned into more complete harmony with the landscape, yet
still living and expansive.

It may be said that the result is here a partly accidental one, and
not a matter of art. But domestic architecture is only half-way a
fine art. It does not aim at a beauty of the monumental kind, as a
statue, a triumphal arch, or even a temple does. Its primary aim is
shelter, to house man in nature,--and it forms, as it were, the
connecting link between him and the outward world. Its results,
therefore, are partly the free artistic production, and partly
retain unmodified their material character. In the image carved by
the sculptor, the stone or wood used derive little of their effect
from the original material; the important character is that imparted