The most pleasing shape of roof, other things being equal, is the pyramidal or hipped, inclining from all sides towards the centre. The drawback is, that, if it must be pierced by windows, their lines will stick off from the roof, so that, as seen from below, they will be violently detached from the general mass. The good taste of the old builders made them avoid putting dormer-windows (at least in front) in roofs of one pitch; the windows were in the gables, carried out for this purpose; or if dormers were necessary, they made a mansard or double-pitched roof, in which the windows are less detached. Another excellent feature in the old New-England farm-houses is the long slope of the roof behind, and, in general, the habit of roofing porches, dormers, sheds, and other projections by continuing the main roof over them, with great gain to breadth and solidity of effect.
In fact, were it possible, we could not do better for the outside than to take these old houses for our model. But here, as everywhere, we find the outside depends on the inside, and that what we most admire in them will conflict with the new requirements. For instance, the massive central chimney and the expanse on the ground point to the kitchen as the common living-room of the family; they are irreconcilable with our need of more chambers and of the possibility of more separation above and below. The later and more ambitious houses, such as were built in the neighborhood of Boston at the beginning of the century, come nearer to our wants; but they sacrifice too much to a cut-and-dried symmetry to be of much use to us. After that the way is downward through one set of absurdities after another, until of late some signs of more common-sense treatment begin to be visible.
The way out of this quagmire is first of all to avoid confusion of aim. What is this that we are building? If it is a monument, let us seek only to make it beautiful. But if it is a house, let us always keep in mind that the appearance of it, being really secondary, must be seen to have been held so throughout. Else we shall not, in the long run, escape bad taste. Bad taste is not mere failure, but failure to do something which ought not to have been attempted. For instance, among the most frequent occasions for deformity in modern houses are the dormers, the windows that rise above the roof. In the Gothic buildings these are among the most attractive features. The reason is that the tendency of the outline to detach itself from the mass of the building furnishes to the Gothic a culminating point for the distinct legitimate aim at beauty of expression that pervades the whole; but to the modern builder, whose aim, as regards expression, should be wholly negative, it is at best an embarrassment, and often a snare.
The chief obstacle to a rational view of the present position of architecture comes from the number of clever men who devote their lives to putting a good face on our absurdities, and by all sorts of tricks and sophistries in wood and stone prevent us from seeing our conduct in its proper deformity. They dazzle and bewilder us with beauties plucked at haphazard from all times and ages,—as much forgeries as any that men are hanged for,—and then, when the cheat begins to peep through, they fool us again with pretences of thoroughness, consistency of style, genuineness in the use of materials, etc., as if the danger were in the execution, and not in the main intention. So they fool us for a while longer, and we praise their fine doings, and even persuade ourselves there is something liberal and ennobling in their influence. But we tire at last of these exotics. A million of them is not worth one of those sober flowers of homely growth where use has by chance, as it were, blossomed into beauty. This is the only success in that kind that can be hoped for in our day. But it must come of itself; it cannot be had for the seeking, nor if sought for its own sake. The active competition that goes on in our streets is not the way to it, unless negatively, by way of disgust and exhaustion. For some help, meantime, I commend the opinion of an architect of my acquaintance, who said the highest compliment he ever received was from a drover, who could not account for it that "he had passed that way so often and never seen that old house." Nobody expects his house will be beautiful, do what he will; why pay for the certainty of failure? Not to be conspicuous, and, to that end, to respect the plain fundamental rules of statics, of good construction, of harmonious color, and to resist sacrificing any solid advantage to show, these are our safest rules at present.
MR. AXTELL.
PART III.
The twilight was almost gone on the Saturday night when I went back to the grave, solemn house. There was no one dead in it now. It was the first time that I had approached it without the abyss of shadow under its roof. A little elasticity came back to me. Kino came out to give his welcome: we had become friendly. Katie let me in.
"Perhaps you'd choose to wait down-stairs a bit," she said; "Mr. Abraham's getting his tea up in Miss Lettie's room."
She lighted the lamp, and left me. After my two explorations in unknown realms,—the one voluntary, looking at the painting on the wall, the other involuntary, looking at a human soul in sorrow,—I resolved to shut my eyes to all that they ought not to see; and therefore I stationed myself in the green glade of a chair, and very properly decided that the only thing I would look at should be the fire. What I might see there surely could offend no one, unless it were the deity of Coal,—and Redleaf was not near any carboniferous group.
Peculiar were the forms the fire took an elfish pleasure in assuming. Little blue flames came up into atmospheric life, through the rending fissures where so many years of ages they had been pent into the very blackness of darkness; and as they gained their freedom, they gave tiny, crackling shouts of liberty. "We're free! we're free!" they smally cried; and I wondered if a race, buried as deeply in the strata of races as these bits of burning coal had been in the geologic periods of earth, could utter such cries.