STYLE OF TnE HOUSE. 31 



of large tracts of ground are not common in a waste 

 region, and the finest parks are found in the most highh'- 

 cultivated counties. The buildings which decorate 

 these ground-s are usually of great extent, in elaborate 

 styles of architecture, and cost sums in the construction 

 at which even our richest Americans would shrink in 

 the contemplation. But the park-building Englishman 

 builds for himself and his posterity to inhabit. The 

 American, although he may fancy, or flatter himself, 

 that he builds for the same purpose, in a great majority 

 of cases, after a few years of possession, either willingly 

 alienates it into the hands of a stranger, or, eiijoying it 

 for the term of his own life, his heirs usually expedite 

 that transaction in as brief a space of time after his de- 

 mise as the forms of law will admit. In his design, 

 the laws of entail fortify the Englishman. He is already 

 in possession of a hereditary estate, which has been for 

 generations or centuries in the family, and he builds 

 and improves with a knowledge that, in the usual cur- 

 rent of events, it will continue so to descend. Or, if he 

 buy a j)ark and build his mansion, he intends to found 

 an estate which is to remain in his posterity, or in the 

 collateral branches of his family, with a reasonable ex- 

 pectation that they will occupy it for generations suc- 

 ceeding him. In our country, the laws, contemplating 

 the subdivision of any estate belonging to the head of 

 a family, perpetually admonish him to a limited ex- 

 penditure in so costlj^ a luxury, which, if he be a sen- 

 sible and a prudent man, he will continually bear in 

 mind. Under such considerations, therefore, England, 

 the country from which our fancies and tastes are mostly 

 copied in subjects of this kind, although wortliy of 

 consideration in manv features of imitation, is not, in 



