'There are verandas and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every house - not on one storey alone, but often to one room or another on every storey - put there in general with so little order or regularity, that if, year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner.'
from Pictures from Italy - Charles Dickens
