JOURNAL OF RUPiAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. 



cPitiipns llrtiring tn tljt (Tnuntni. 



3N a former volume we offered a few words to our readers on the subject of choosing 

 ^ a country seat. As the subject was only slightly touched upon, we propose to say 

 something more regarding it now. 



There are few or no magnijicait country seats in America, if we take as a standard 

 such residences as Chatsworth, Woburn, Blenheim, and other well known English 

 places — with parks a dozen miles round, and palaces in their midst larger than our 

 largest public buildings. But any one who notices in the suburbs of our towns and 

 cities, and on the borders of our great rivers and railroads, in the older parts of the 

 Union, the rapidity with which cottages and villa residences are increasing, each one 

 of which costs from three, to thirty or forty thousand dollars, will find that the ag- 

 gregate amount of money expended in American rural homes, for the last ten years, is 

 perhaps, larger than has been spent in any part of the world. Our Anglo-Saxon na- 

 ture leads our successful business men always to look forward to a home out of the 

 city ; and the ease with which freehold property may be obtained here, offers every 

 encouragement to the growth of the natural instinct for landed proprietorship. 



This large class of citizens turning country-folk, which every season's revolution is 

 increasing, which every successful business year greatly augments, and every fortune 

 made in California helps to swell in number, is one which, perhaps, spends its means 

 more freely, and with more of the feeling of getting its full value, than any other 

 class. 



But do they get its full value ? Are there not many who are disgusted with the 

 country after a few years' trial, mainly because they find country places, and country 

 life, as they have tried them, more expensive than a residence in town? And is there 

 not something that may be done to warn the new beginners of the dangers of the voy- 

 pleasure on which they are about to embark, with the fullest faith that 



smooth water? 



Feb. 1, 1852. 



No. II. 



