THE 



;^,'^^^\'^>^;. 



JOUBNAL OF RURAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. I. 



MAY, 1S47. 



No. 11. 



Chaklks Dickens, in that unlucky visit to 

 America in which he was treated like a 

 spoiled child, and left it in the humor that 

 often ■ dlows too lavish a bestowal of sugar 

 plums on spoiled children, made now and 

 then a remark in his characteristic vein of 

 subtle perceptions. Speaki g of some of 

 our wooden villages — the houses as bright 

 as the greenest blinds and the whitest 

 weather-boarding can make them, he said 

 it was quite impossible to believe them 

 real, substantial habitations. They looked 

 " as if they had been put up on Saturday 

 night, and were to be taken down on Mon- 

 day morning !" 



There is no wonder that any tourist, ac- 

 customed to the quiet and harmonious colour 

 of buildings in an English landscape, should 

 be shocked at the glare and rawness of ma- 

 ny of our country dwellings. Brown, the 

 celebrated English landscape gardener, used 

 to say of a new red brick house, that it 

 would " put a whole valley in a fever !" 

 Some of our freshly painted villages, seen 

 in a bright summer da}'^, might give a man 

 with weak eyes a fit of the ophthalmia. 



We have previously ventured a word or 

 two against this national passion for white 

 paint, and it seems to us a fitting moment to 

 62 



look the subject boldly in the face once 

 more. 



In a country where a majority of the 

 houses are built of wood, the use of some 

 paint is an absolute necessity in point of 

 economy. What the colors of this paint 

 are, we consider a matter no less important 

 in point of taste. 



Now, genuine white lead, (the color nomi- 

 nally used for most exteriors) is one of the 

 dearest of paints.* It is not therefore econo- 

 my which leads our countrymen into such 

 a dazzling error. Some mistaken notions, 

 touching its good effect, in connection with 

 the country, is undoubtedly at the bottom of 

 it. " Give me," says a retired citizen, be- 

 fore whose eyes, red brick and dusty streets 

 have been the only objects for years, " give 

 me a white house with bright green blinds 

 in the country." To him, white is at once 

 the newest, cleanest, smartest, and most 

 conspicuous colour which it is possible to 

 choose for his cottage or villa. Its fresh- 

 ness and newness he prizes as a clown does 



* AVe say genuine while lead, for it is notorious that four- 

 fifths of the white paint sold under this name in the United 

 States, is only an imitation of it, composed largely of whiting. 

 Though the first cost of the latter is little, yet as it soon rubs 

 otTanil speedily requires renewal, it is one of the dearest col- 

 ours in tl)e end. 



