AUCTOR. Little friend, how little you know! To a building windows are
everything; they are what eyes are to a man. Out of windows a building
takes its view; in windows the outlook of its human inhabitants is
framed. If you were the lord of a very high tower overlooking a town,
a plain, a river, and a distant hill (I doubt if you will ever have
such luck!), would you not call your architect up before you and say -
'Sir, see that the windows of my house are _tall, narrow, thick_, and
have a _round top to them'?_
Of course you would, for thus you would best catch in separate
pictures the sunlit things outside your home.
Never ridicule windows. It is out of windows that many fall to their
deaths. By windows love often enters. Through a window went the bolt
that killed King Richard. King William's father spied Arlette from a
window (I have looked through it myself, but not a soul did I see
washing below). When a mob would rule England, it breaks windows, and
when a patriot would save her, he taxes them. Out of windows we walk
on to lawns in summer and meet men and women, and in winter windows
are drums for the splendid music of storms that makes us feel so
masterly round our fires. The windows of the great cathedrals are all
their meaning.
