BROWN HOUSES AND IJGHTNING CONDUCTORS. 



least everywhere within 300 miles of New-York,) and we, who used to put our eyes out 

 with the everlasting glare of white paint, (with only the vulgar relief of very green 

 bliuds) — are now being " done brown" — Victoria-ized— {poor innocent republicans as 

 we are) — simply because Trinity Church was built of brown stone, and some ignorant 

 John Bull of a house painter took it into his head to daub over all the brick houses 

 in Gotham, as nearly like brown stone as he could make them. 



Seriously, we protest against this snufF-colored mixture, with which all our dwellings, 

 good, bad, and indifferent, are likely to be painted out of existence — for "Victoria 

 brown" is a most suicidal, melancholy color. There are, to be sure, many houses so 

 little calculated to awaken any emotion but those of wonder as to how they came to 

 be built — houses that we would like to see deeply dyed of some hue that would render 

 them quite invisible to mortal gaze. But others there are, that the eye rests on with 

 delight — beautiful country houses — perhaps modest cottages, with latticed porches 

 half overgrown with the " lush woodbine," or pretty villas, embowered in shrubbery 

 and smooth lawns, or pleasant, rambling farm houses, seated amid blossoming orchards, 

 or, may-hap, stately mansions with park-like meadows, studded with noble groups of 

 that loveliest and most graceful of all American trees, the Weeping Elm ; and for all 

 such we implore a respite ! We beg all true lovers of good taste to protect these fair 

 homes in the country, from the rude assaults of these Knights of the Brush — these 

 valiant Don Quixotes of the Victoria Brown regiment, who go about attacking all 

 that does not wear their color, more desperately and omnipotently than Don Quix- 

 ote of old did the windmills of La Mancha. 



This is the epidemic of New- York. That of New-England has taken a widely dif- 

 ferent shape. The tendencies of our eastern neighbors always take a more subtle and 

 spiritual direction, and accordingly, we find that while the rural districts of New- York 

 are brown-stone-blind — or rather blind to everything but brown, the country folks 

 down east are equally distracted on the subject of lightning rods I 



We have never heard from scientific men, that New-England is a land peculiarly 

 liable to be struck by lighfni?ig, (rather famous it is, generally, for s^W^es of another 

 sort,) but certainly, any person travelling for the first time through that part of the 

 Union, at the present day, would set it down as a fixed fact, that it was " down east" 

 alone, that Spencer could have had in his imagination when he was led to say, 



The sky in pieces seeming: to be rent 



Throws lighuiing Ibrlli, and hail, and harmful showers. 



Why, there is scarcely a house worth five hundred dollars in Connecticut or Massachu- 

 setts, which has not, within the last half dozen years, mounted a chevaux de frieze of 

 bristling steel conductors, as terrible to the eye of a lover of repose in the country, as 

 the serried ranks of one of Napoleon's invincible hollow squares, presenting innumerable 

 bayonets at all conceivable points of attack, were to his enemies. A new neighbor stroll- 

 ing out for the first time, and encountering one of these domicils armed from top to 

 toe with iron rods, and " presenting arms" at every angle, at the top of every chim- 

 the turn of every corner, yes, and at intervals of every half dozen feet 

 the straight ridge of the roof there are no angles — would he not turn back 



