of such working details as shall in execution preserve the pictorial and keep out the rain. Consider the cost of the long rod-bolts, and other expensive articles of copper and metal, which the pelting of the storm will render imperative. If these "appliances" be not thought of at the first, your employer will surely regard them, in their subsequent adoption, as remedial extras to make good radical defect. Our own per

plexities in these particulars have been frequent and harassing, and we would put our younger brethren on their guard. Let them recollect, that, in a smart sketch, they draw out and sign a promissory note, which may require all the wealth of their practical attainment to pay.

ARCHITECTS' DUTIES.—A gentleman, in employing an architect, will not fail to consider that he might do without one; and it is, therefore, under the impression of something over and above what the builder could do for him, that he incurs the expense of professional advice and assistance. The least he has a right to expect, is the value of the artistical, in addition to that of the practical; and he may reasonably expect yet more. Superiority of taste, and of ingenuity in arrangement, he will look for as a matter of course; and it must be admitted that he has also a right to superior knowledge in respect to the economical (and at the same time fully efficient) management of material and general construction. But he will frequently (and not with so much reason) look for more still, and be inclined to visit upon his architect those failures in particular construction which only good workmen can insure, under the direction of the contracting builder, and the supervision of an everwatchful clerk of the works, exclusively occupied on one job. It will be well, therefore, for the architect at once to undeceive his employer in this last parti

cular. He cannot be always present to see that the interior of the walls is well compacted with solid filling and sufficient mortar; that foundations and drains, which are concealed as soon as laid, have been executed in thorough obedience to his specifications; that every slate is properly nailed, and every piece of lead flashing inserted sufficiently in the masonry; that all the carpentry is thoroughly sound and seasoned; that all the joinery is properly "framed, glued, and blocked;" that the plastering has been mixed in the prescribed proportions, and efficiently worked up; that the flues are all of the full size and properly pargetted; that paving has been laid on a well-prepared bottom; in short, he cannot, during only the occasional visits of inspection which he engages to afford, see into those parts of the work which have in the intervals been concealed; nor can he anticipate those future deficiencies, either in work or material, which may not show themselves in any degree until some time after the occupation of the premises. He will have done much in observing, that all, which from time to time remains developed to him, is effected to his satisfaction; and his drawings and specifications will still remain, to justify, under any future chance of impeachment, their sufficiency as a means towards a satisfactory end. Even a contractor, however-practically competent, cannot be always on the spot; and no merely ordinary foreman can be trusted in his stead, because if he be so trustworthy, he is worthy of the double pay which will leave him an "ordinary foreman" no longer.

CLERK OF WORKS.-When an employer will not take upon himself the responsibility of trusting to the efficiency of the contractor and his men, the architect is bound to insist on the engagement of a well-tried

clerk of the works. The author of these "Hints" has suffered so much, from a too ready desire to save his employer the charge of a constant supervisor, that he cannot too strongly urge upon those whom he now addresses the advisability of having a clear understanding with their patrons on this point.

DETAILS.—To recur to a few matters of taste in the interior finishings of houses. We recommend the young architect to provide a good and varied supply of specimen drawings for the enrichments of cornices, ceilings, internal dressings and panellings of doors and windows; chimney-pieces of marble, for sitting and best bed rooms; of wood, combined with stone or marble, for bedrooms; of wood, with slate slips, to keep the former from the heat of the fire; and of cheap simple chimney-pieces of Portland or slate, for kitchens, offices, and inferior rooms; designs for columned screens, dividing a long sitting-room into two compartments, and supporting a partition wall, or stack of chimneys, in the rooms above; for columned or pilastered decorations for dining-room recesses; for staircase or other lanterns, with their cornices, and the enriched soffits round their openings in the main ceiling; for turned wood, or cast iron, stair balusters; for cast-iron lights over entrance-door transoms.

All these are matters in which the individual fancy of the architect, and the whim of his employer, may be more indulged than in those severer and more conventional features which constitute external architectural decoration and character; and the young professor, during the leisure of his yet only partially occupied time, may advantageously keep up his hand as a draughtsman, and invigorate his imagination as an artist, by studying them, and providing a series of such examples as will, hereafter at least, prove sugges

tive, if not ready at once for adoption. Employers can rarely see what they desire unless they first see something like it. The slight sketches of these things which appear in small sections and elevations, or which are vaguely described in specifications, will merely serve as postponements of available consideration, and this will arrive at a period when you may regret not having entertained it before. Against a sketch or slight description, a contractor puts a low and unconsidered price; and when your working drawings are afterwards made out, he considers them as much beyond the thing intended, as the employer thinks them beneath it.

ORNAMENT.-The economy of ornament is not so much shown in employing it only where most needed, as in sparingly employing it, with due relative proportion, in every place where it is needed at all. Thus, in all parts of a house which are seen in immediate and unconcealed connection with the principal rooms, their relationship to those rooms should be marked. As an instance of prevailing defect in this particular, we may allude to the application of bold and handsome cornices to staircases and the ceilings of staircase landings, while the plastered soffit of the stairs forms a plain and mean-looking junction with the face of the wall. You need not, it is true, continue the modillions of a landing cornice down the rake of the stair soffit to the floor; but you should unquestionably continue down it one or more of the upper mouldings of that cornice.* White plastered soffits are not, in fact, the most suitable to a range of wainscot stairs. Plaster expresses stone:† and no one would think of casing the ends, risers, and treads, of a flight of stone steps with

It is strange that architects overlook the relief of their stair-soffits. Why should they not have raking cornices?

+ The inference here is hardly logical (see Design).

wood. The soffit of a wooden flight of stairs should, therefore, either be formed of wood panelling, or of plaster, papered or painted in imitation of it: but, under any circumstances, forget not the raking moulding. Even when the stairs are of stone, with under-cut mould

ings, we would still show the moulded work stopping short of the part of the stone inserted in the wall, forming the intervening part into a continuous raking line, and running under it the plaster moulding we have alluded to.*

HINTS ON COMFORT AND CONVENIENCE.

DOUBLE DOORS.-In allusion to a few matters of comfort and convenience, we would hint at the virtue of being a match for the occasional violence of gusty weather, in so contriving that two doors shall be passed before you are fairly in the body of the house. Thus an enclosed porch will enable you to shut the outer or porch door, before the inner or passage door is opened. An entrance vestibule should, if possible, have only one outer door, and one inner door leading into the staircase or hall of common internal communication. The interception of through draughts cannot be too attentively considered. A range of doors, all opening one way, in a long passage with a window at each end, will often exhibit the very perfection of the evil; and you may not expect your lady patroness to give much eulogy to the perspective of your corridor if she loses her cap in passing through it, and only gains in return

*[Or the ends of steps near the wall could be left to show their whole section, the soffit being countersunk.]