WHEELER'S RURAL HOMES. 



with the same facility as running-hand itself. We are a little inclined, in criticising it more 

 closel}^, to select as a text, one of the author's own paragraphs, which he throws out, we 

 fear, as the Italians throw sugar plums at the carnival — not expecting you to take them 

 for anything more solid than pleasant jokes. 



" Houses — says Mr. Wheeler — may tell very well in advertisements, and speculating 

 builders know how to make them look sweetly pretty upon paper, but, dearjriends, take 

 care that you thoroughly satisfy yourselves that you can make them homes, before you 

 commit j'ourselves to a choice that you can afterwards repent." 



Amen! we say to this, with all our heart. And now saying Amen, and finding that 

 Mr. Wheeler is an architect who writes not merely as an amateur, since he loses no op- 

 portunity to tell us in his preface, and throughout the book, that " as an architect he has 

 mastered the rudiments, technicalities, and theories of the science," we naturally turn from 

 the " sweetly pretty" letter-press of the work, to the more practical consideration of the 

 designs themselves — as suited to "American Country Life." 



The Frontispiece — is what the author calls the Homestead, and which he defines as a 

 " house suited to American life, manners, and climate." It is amusing, looking at it in 

 this point of view, to see how transparent is the fiction which covers Mr. Wheeler's 

 English education. This design is, in the first place, one of the worst examples of that 

 bastard stylo of Elizabethan, which all true architects have pronounced the most debased 

 of all styles. The roof seems to pierce the sky like a wedge — the contorted copings of the 

 gables have the uncomfortable twist of an eel in spasms, and the parapet to the tower is a 

 copy of the absurd whimsicalities common to old English manor-houses of the time of 

 Elizabeth. The deep parapet gutters on the right elevation of this house, are also Eng- 

 lish features, utterly unsuited to the American climate — and one which, whenever it is 

 adopted here, is the cause of endless leaks and indefinite tinker's bills to the American 

 pocket. The only really American feature in the house, is the broad square veranda which 

 Mr. Wheeler seems to have added to his English design — and that it has been added as 

 an after thought, and not originally composed with the rest of the design, is painfully ap- 

 parent from its total incongruity — it being, in fact, a broad wing, with a projecting brack- 

 etted cornice, and an almost flat roof, tacked on to the steepest roofed edifice, with high 

 parapets and the most meagre of gothic cornices. Oh, Mr. Wheeler! this maybe 

 "sweetly pretty," and it may be built for twelve thousand, but it is not a house suited 

 to the American climate. 



" A Country House," page 60, 'is one of the best plans, and most satisfactory and un- 

 pretending elevations — but how any architect who has "mastered all the theories and 

 technicalities," could design a veranda so poor and meagre in its cornice and supports as 

 the one shown in this elevation, it is difificult to conceive. Here is, also, the same want of 

 unity of design between the house and the veranda — the former having boldly projecting 

 eaves — the latter looking like a cropped terrier, who is minus ears and tail. The small 

 window over the door in the wing is crowded out of both place and proportion, and no 

 attempt has been made to make it compose properly by adapting its form to the place and 

 purpose it fills. 



The Gothic Cottage, p. 72 — which the author has built in Connecticut, is, we suppose, 

 another illustration of his talent in designing houses " suited to American country life." 

 Here is a cottage one story high — say 12 feet, with a roof running up as steep and high as 

 possible — say twenty-five feet more, and looking like a tall extinguisher on a short candle. 



is the inevitable consequence? Simply this, that all the sleeping rooms in this house Vnj 

 tirely under the roof, and are thereby ten times as hot in our intense summers 



