RUDENESS AND SIMPLICITY. 271 



and in the rear of the house a quantity of wood is neatly 

 piled against the rugged stone-wall There is an absence 

 of all litter about the house ; and the superfluous branches 

 which have been lopped from the orchard trees are cut up 

 for fuel, and thrown into a conical heap a few steps from 

 the back door. A foot-path winds along the roadside to 

 the front, and another in the rear of the house leads to 

 the field or garden. There is neither paint nor white- 

 wash anywhere to be seen, yet all who pass by would 

 point to the place as a pattern of neatness. 



But Fashion, the idol of vulgar minds, not content 

 with exercising her sway in the palatial mansion and at 

 the haberdasher's shop, in deciding the comparative merits 

 of insipid pears at the horticultural rooms, and displaying 

 her metaphysical subtlety in wine-cellars, became, a few 

 years since, a teacher of aesthetics. Since that time " men 

 of taste " have been at work, in book, pamphlet, and lec- 

 ture, casting contempt upon rudeness and simplicity, 

 always reserving a little praise for their counterfeit. Ac- 

 cording to their ideas, nothing in village scenery should be 

 tolerated that is not " beautiful." They would destroy or 

 remove out of sight every object that does not bear on its 

 face the gilding of wealth or the flummery of art. Al- 

 ready, in many of our villages once charming in their 

 simplicity, do we see the effects of this esthetic vandal- 

 ism. How many a delightful place, which we could not 

 look upon without imagining it a little nook in paradise, 

 has been destroyed by the prevailing taste for beautifying 

 one's abode ! How many comfortable old farm-houses, with 

 their neat and rustic enclosures, their tussocks of wild 

 shrubbery that afforded a harbor to the birds, and their 

 pleasant approaches by a foot-path fringed with wild 

 flowers, have been improved and beautified, until we turn 

 from them with mingled disgust and contempt, as from an 

 aged crone dressed in jewels and laces ! 



