worthy of study and imitation. Many of these old stair balustrades, with their daintily carved and twisted balusters and graceful newels, the door and window trim, chimney pieces with delicate ornamentation in putty and wood mouldings, the paneled wainscots, cornices and ceiling decorations, are not surpassed in elegance and appropriateness by the corresponding work of any country or time. There are several reasons why this should be so. It followed, at a respectful distance, as became dependent colonies, the period of the best work of this style in the mother country. Some of it was brought bodily from Europe, like the best furniture of that time, and its successful imitation and adaptation were comparatively easy. Feminine influence would naturally be more potent in the inner fittings of the home; and it has always been a marked trait of the Englishman to leave the outside of his domicile simple and unostentatious whatever luxury and elegance might be contained within. In comparison with modern American homes this is also characteristic of all Europe. Where Americans learned to turn their houses wrong side out in the endeavor to astonish their neighbors by the external gorgeousness of their wooden abiding places I am not able to say.
      The "decline and fall" of good colonial architecture in America, like the decline and fall of other good things in times ancient and modern, came apparently from the following of the letter to the neglect of the spirit. What the earlier architects and builders did in the simplicity of their ignorance or through their willing acceptance of ancient authority was done by the later degenerates, in what appeared to be an endeavor to counteract architectural heresy, by a return to the strict orthodoxy of the schools. This speedily led to so many inconsistencies and absurdities, that colonial architecture in its debased form began to be considered "old fash-