[Illustration: “I never was so glad to get home, in my life.”]
Were it not for these psychological needs of ours, one might do much worse, even now, than build himself a not too grotesque Scaramouch house. Jacobin architecture was, at least, symmetrical (see Plate LX), and in plan that it was eminently sensible cannot be denied. The rooms were square, commodious and airy, amplified by numerous bay-windows, besides being so arranged as to open en suite with either folding or sliding doors. The windows were tall, generally extending from floor to ceiling, affording the best of light and ventilation. The second story enjoyed the relative advantages of the first, while every cubic inch of the third story was available for bedrooms owing to the economy there is in the Mansart roof. Then, piazza space was generous to a fault, a porte-cochère went without the saying, and I must add that in all this there was a gracious note. Indeed, there is no good reason that I can see why we should not exploit Jacobin architecture to-day, save one, and it is just _that_:--“Man cannot live by bread alone.”
The milestones of art are the signboards of history. Political moves may or may not signify. Treaties international are usually effected by skilful diplomacy, foes may be bluffed by naval and military manœuvres; but the art of a nation betrays its innermost confidences--the stuff whereof ’tis made.
If, however, as happened at the Centennial Exposition in 1876, a political advent coincides with one in art, that milestone becomes an epoch-marker extraordinary. In 1876 the arts of the world, for the first time, were made to pass before this people as an alluring pageant, and a general desire to avail ourselves of them returned to replace the vacuum that had existed since the platform of Andrew Jackson denounced the refinements of life as attributes of an overbearing aristocracy, patroons and manor-lords, and necessarily
[Illustration: ULTRA-FASHIONABLE, QUEEN-ANNE ARCHITECTURE.]
[Illustration: FASHIONABLE HOUSE--EASTLAKE SCHOOL.]
fraught with every danger to a nation’s liberty and strength.
But let us see how unintelligently, nevertheless, we went about the new art movement. Like the North American Indian who habitually first learns the vices of civilization, we were not slow to discover the meretricious in whatever art the old world chose to exhibit, and this we began assiduously to adapt, especially in the field of applied ornament.