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     Ball-Room, Saloon, Music-Room, Gallery                i
die-class house, not from the aristocratic country-seat or town
residence.   The English nobleman's town house was like the
French hOtel, with gates, porter's lodge, and court-yard sur-
rounded by stables and offices; and the planning of the country-
seat was even more elaborate.
 A glance at any collection of old English house-plans, such as
Campbell's Vitruvius 'Britannicu&, will show the purely middle-
class ancestry of the American house, and the consequent futility
of attempting, by the mere enlargement of each room, to turn it
into a gentleman's seat or town residence.   The kind of life which
makes gala rooms necessary exacts a different method of planning;
and until this is more generally understood the treatment of such
rooms in American houses will never be altogether satisfactory.
 Gala rooms are meant for general entertainments, never for any
assemblage small or informal enough to be conveniently accom-
modated in the ordinary living-rooms of the house; therefore to
fulfil their purpose they must be large, very high-studded, and not
overcrowded with furniture, while the walls and ceiling-the
only parts of a crowded room that can be seen-must be deco-
rated with greater elaboration than would be pleasing or appro-
priate in other rooms.  All these conditions unfit the gala room
for any use save that for which it is designed.  Nothing can be
more cheerless than the state of a handful of people sitting after
dinner in an immense ball-room with gilded ceiling, bare floors,
and a few pieces of monumental furniture ranged round the walls;
yet in any house which is simply an enlargement of the ordinary
private dwelling the hostess is often compelled to use the ball-
room or saloon as a drawing-room.
 A gala room is never meant to be seen except when crowded:
the crowd takes the place of furniture.  Occupied by a small num-