forth its angles and masses. But old colonial reproductions are, of course, still painted white. In an address before the American Institute of Architects in 1868, Mr. Richard Upjohn said: "Let me speak a word for color, against which our fellow-citizens seem to have had a strong though now happily departing prejudice. Color is the vitalizing principle of architecture, as it is of Nature. Reduce a landscape to a dead uniformity or monotint, and admire the result if you can. Destroy color, and you chill the very life of art. See how the strong yellow tint of a sunset' enlivens the most tame and contemptible building. We can not have a permanent sunset; we can not rule the atmospheric laws to our ends; but we can, by choice of material for color and texture on exteriors, and by polychrome and rays of light, stained by their passage through tinted glass, do something toward replacing their effects." The increasing influence of the architect over his client is a fact of which Mr. Howells made use in writing the story of "The Rise of Silas Lapham," whose idea of a house, it will be remembered, was a brown-stone front, four stories high, and a French roof, with an airchamber above. Black walnut was to be used in all the rooms, except in the attic, which was to be painted and grained to look like black walnut. The whole was to be very high-studded, and there were to be handsome cornices and elaborate center - pieces throughout. But the architect was skillful, "as nearly all architects are," in playing upon that simple instrument, man; and, in the course of a friendly conversation, persuaded Mr. Lap. ham to have the entrance-story low-studded, with a little reception-room beside the door; to use the whole width of the house frontage for a square hall, with an easy, low-tread staircase, running up three sides of it; to paint the drawing-room white, introducing a little gold here and there, with, perhaps, a painted frieze under the cornice-garlands of roses on a gold ground -and a white-marble chimney-piece, treated in the refined empire style. Lapham "respected a fellow who could beat him at every point, and have a reason ready, as this architect had; and when he recovered from the daze into which the complete upheaval of all his preconceived notions had left him, he was in a fit state to swear by the architect." The most brilliant American example of the possible influence of the architect over his client, was the late Mr. H. H. Richardson, a characteristic specimen of whose genius is seen in the illustration (p. 363) of the lodge of Mr. Frederick L. Ames's house at North Easton, Mass. For parlors and bedrooms, the most fashionable style of decoration is Louis XVI; there are two French establishments on Fifth Avenue, New York city, which devote themselves entirely to Louis XVI work. For dining-rooms and libraries the fashionable finish is in the styles of Henry II and François I. In city-houses it is not uncommon to sacrifice two feet of the parlor to the hall, in order to give the latter apartment the appearance of a comfortable sitting-room. The styles known to young architects as the "Bloody Mary" and the "Mother Hubbard " have seen their best days. An example of pure Louis XVI is a drawing-room recently renovated by Mr. H. O. Avery, the architect. The woodwork was cleaned with acid, and then subjected to an enamel finish; the walls are a shrimp pink, with Lyons silk in panels decorated with rosettes and intertwined ribbons in relief. The curtains, also of Lyons silk, manufactured after the architect's designs, show a pattern of nosegays held up by ribbons that float over a pink field. On the cream-tinted ceiling are square panels of Louis XVI patterns, surrounded by twined tulip-leaves. The cornice, once a modern classic motive, is now French, with intertwined leaves of ivy. Metal sconces appear between the panels of the walls, at a height of six and a half feet from the floor. All the wood-work has received five coats of paint and three of varnish, and then been rubbed down to its enamel finish with pumice-stone and oil. The old blackwalnut furniture, once covered with darkclaret satin, has been painted pink and upholstered with Lyons silk, like that of the panels of the walls; and the general effect of the room is of cream and gold. This revival of Louis XVI decoration began with the Vanderbilt and Goelet houses in New York city. It extends even to the carpet, which in the draw room just mentioned is in shrimp and creama Louis XVI reflex of the patterns of the ceiling and the walls-manufactured by Templeton Brothers in Scotland, after the architects' designs. A simple and inexpensive method of treating the interior of a seaside cottage, is seen in the illustration of several rooms at North East Harbor, Me., designed by Mr. W. R. Emerson. It may be added that the American architect of to-day desires to have charge of the decoration within the house and the landscape-gardening around it. Both the arrangement of the grounds and the finish of the interior walls are parts of his principal scheme. To many visitors the most interesting contributions to the third annual exhibition of the Architectural League, in New York city, December, 1887, were the designs for countryhouses by William Convers Hazlett, Clarence S. Luce, Charles T. Mott, Charles A. Rich, Rossiter & Wright, Brunner & Tryon, John Calvin Stevens, Wilson Eyre, Jr., and Bruce Price. The object of the league is "the promotion of architecture and the allied fine arts," and among the committees was the Loan Exhibition Committee, which gathered from various private sources nearly two hundred oil paintings, water-color studies, and pieces of sculpture and of furniture. Most of the members have spent years in study in Europe, particularly in Paris, and so great is their confidence in their productive resources that they show freely to one another, twice a month, all their new designs. American architects have hitherto been loath to exhibit their unexecuted designs, for fear that they should be stolen. The league now numbers one hundred and twenty members, residents of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Paul, St. Louis, Albany, Portland, and Buffalo, and is in a highly prosperous condition, its annual exhibitions attracting the best artists and the leading amateurs. We now proceed to describe in detail some representative country-seats of the new epoch. The late Mr. Charles J. Osborn's house at Mamaroneck, New York (Messrs. McKim, Mead, & White, architects) holds the rank of a modern feudal castle. The plan is Lshaped, the length one hundred and fiftythree feet, and the width one hundred and forty-four feet. The large, round parlortower. fifty-three feet high, and twenty-three feet wide at its greatest diameter, is the principal feature of the building as seen from Long Island Sound. The material of the main walls is grayish local stone in the first story, and shingles in the second story, which projects about two feet, and is supported on corbels of rough stone. Through the entire depth of the building is a driveway, fifteen feet wide, under a stone arch, whose keystone is thirteen feet above the ground. The entrance to the house is within this driveway. Panels of pebbles and cockle-shells, set in gray plastering, appear above the arch. A series of casement windows opens into the |