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They are excellent of their kind, large uncompact piles of masonry, glistening-white or dull-yellow, with blistered paint, and slates, tiles, or shingles, which last curl up in the sun like feathers. A nearer glance shows the house-walls stained and gangrened with rot and mildew, the river-floods often shaking hands with the rains in the ground-floors.

In this hilly street the ground-floors of the merchants are neither shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle Ages will here find the ouvrouere of our forefathers in all its naive simplicity. These low rooms, which have no shop-frontage, no show-windows, in fact no glass at all, are deep and dark and without interior or exterior decoration.

There is not a man in England so regular in his habits." Here the friends reached a drawing-room in which the member of parliament seldom sat, for his private apartments were all on the ground-floor. "But it is the strangest whim of yours, Harley," said he. "What?" "To affect detestation of ground-floors." "Affect! O sophisticated man, of the earth, earthy!

The ground-floors of the houses were occupied by shops; with a story above, and a large wooden balcony painted green. On either side of the street, which was well paved, was a foot-path; and as there were no vehicles of any description, the traffic being carried on by mules, it was free from ruts, and remarkably clean.

The wooden shutters, outside the ground-floors that really stood upon the ground, told, if you chose to listen, of how they kept the houses safe from thieves in moonlit nights a century ago; and the doors between them for each house was three windows wide opened straight into the kitchen. So they were, or had been, cottages.

"Frantic because the road isn't finished; frantic because he can't get in on all the ground-floors in all the mining deals; frantic some more because he has to live in a shack hotel while he has a private car and a good cook, as he thinks, only a few miles away. Which reminds me: the '01' has a pretty good cook, and the incomparible Johnson, don't let them escape.

Some have tumbled down; others were tumbling down; many of those standing were lumber or board shanties called 'quarter-frames' and 'ground-floors; sundry large piles rose grisly and fire-charred, and the few good houses looked quite modern.

The windows of the ground-floors were grated to the prison-like effect common throughout Italy; but people evidently lived upon the ground-floors, and at many of the iron-barred windows fair young prisoners sat and looked out upon the streets, or laughed and chatted together.

The continual and monotonous drip of the rain, which ripples in streams or falls drop by drop on the pavement of the yards or of the street, is also highly depressing to the spirits when one is held an involuntary prisoner in the ground-floors of the houses, and must perforce listen to it for hours.

As ground became more valuable and house-room more scarce, these ground-floors were enclosed with wall veils between the original shafts, and so remain; but the type of the structure of the entire city is given in the Ducal Palace.