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steps. Imposing as this was, it was not domestic. The 

 old charm and rusticity of placing had gone. They still 

 build in England on the grass and always have. Why we, 

 who have the drier climate, should ascend into the air I 

 cannot tell. Perhaps the snow^ banked against the wooden 

 house rotted it, but they did not find this out for a hundred 

 and fifty years. At any rate it ruins houses for beauty 

 to place them away from the soil, the grass, the shrubs. 

 These should nod into the windows and bower the porch, 

 as if they belonged to the family, and the sweep of lawn 

 and floor should be one — at least for l^eauty and senti- 

 ment, and I believe it can be reconciled with health. In 

 1800 the house of Judge Endicott was raised but it is 

 still away from the street. A beautiful doorway and 

 sweet house next Mr. W^illson's church, down street, was 

 raised in the same way ; the roofs of these houses were 

 full of cheer ; much may be made of roofs. They are 

 in themselves an architecture. How they disappeared 

 afterwai'd ; nothing was made of them until these late 

 years, when they have been overdone with no correct pure 

 feeling:. AValkinsr aloni^ the delisfhtful old streets of 

 Salem, or any similar New England town, this feature, 

 with the benignity of it, and the tender placing on the 

 ground, charm one. How vulgar the later building, 

 gingerbread ornaments, bed-post details and designs 

 turned out by the lathe ! 



Until, in these late years, education is ridding us of this 

 display of cheap commonplace ; but now the architect runs 

 wild with us, as formerly the builder. Breadth, propor- 

 tion, repose, we rarely see it now as it prevailed to 1800 

 — simple dignity. This has given w^ay to such countless 

 variety of styles that I hold it a reproach to architecture, 

 that it never does anything of its own but constantly re- 

 produces, imitates, selects. In their day the styles suf- 



