No. 4 House.—Roof, crimson-red tiles; walls, stone-coloured rough cast; peacock-blue paint; red chimneys.
This bare list tells of the inharmonious relation of colours, but it cannot supply the variety of tones of red, nor yet the mixture of lines, roof-angles, balcony or bow projections, one of which ran up to the top of a steep-pitched roof, and was castellated at the summit. The road was called “Bon-Accord”. One has sometimes to thank local authorities for unconscious jokes.
My space is filled, and even a woman’s monologue must conclude some time! But one paragraph more may be taken to put in a plea for space for an Open-air Museum. It need not be a large and exhaustive one, for there is something to be said for not making museums “too bright and good for human nature’s daily food”. There might be objects of museum interest scattered in groups about the green girdle which the young among my readers will, I trust, live to see round all great towns; or an open-air exhibit on a limited subject might be provided, as the late Mr. Burt arranged so charmingly at Swanage; or the Shakespeare Gardens, already started in some of the London County Council parks, might be further developed; or the more ambitious schemes of Stockholm and Copenhagen intimated; but whichever model is adopted the idea of open-air museums (which might be stretched to include bird sanctuaries) is one which should find a place in the gracious environment of our well-ordered towns when they have come under the law and the gospel of the Town-planning Act.
Henrietta O. Barnett.
THE MISSION OF MUSIC.[[1]]
By Canon Barnett.
July, 1899.
[1] From “International Journal of Ethics”. By permission of the Editor.
“We must have something light or comic.” So say those who provide music for the people, and their words represent an opinion which is almost universal with regard to the popular taste. The uneducated, it is thought, must be unable to appreciate that which is refined or to enjoy that which does not make them laugh and be merry.