od, Richard bad completed his design. He had availed himself, in this heavy undertaking, of the experience of a certain wandering, eastern mechanic, who, by exhibiting a few solid plates of English architecture, and talking learnedly of friezes, entablatures, and particularly of the composite order, had obtained a very undue influence over Richard's taste, in every thing that pertained to that branch of the fine arts. Not but what Mr. Jones affected to consider Mr. Hiram Doolittle a perfect empyric in his profession; being in the constant habit of listening to his treatises on architecture, with a kind of indulgent smile, yet, either from an inability to oppose them by any thing plausible from his own stores of learning, or from a secret admiration of their truth, Richard generally submitted to the arguments of his coadjutor. Together, they had not only erected a dwelling for Marmaduke, but had given a fashion to the architecture of the country. The composite order, Mr. Doolittle would contend, was an order composed of many others, and was intended to be the most useful, for it admitted into its construction such alterations as convenience or circumstances might require. To this proposition Richard very gravely assented; and it was by this unison in sentiment that the composite order, or a style of architecture that emanated from the carpenter's own genius, with a few suggestions from the other, became the fashion of the new county.
The house itself, or the "lastly," was of stone; large, square, formal, and far from uncomfortable. These were four requisites, on which Marmaduke had insisted with a little more than his ordinary pertinacity. But every thing else was peaceably resigned to Richard and his associate. These worthies found but little opportunity for the dis-
