CHAPTER XIV 

 ON CITIZENS RETIRING TO THE COUNTRY* 



IN another essay we offered a few words to our readers 

 on the subject of choosing a country seat. As the 

 subject was only slightly touched upon we propose to 

 say something more regarding it now. 



There are few or no magnificent country seats in America, 

 if we take as a standard such residences as Chatsworth, 

 Woburn, Blenheim, and other well known English places 

 -with parks a dozen miles round, and palaces in their 

 midst larger than our largest public buildings. But any 

 one who notices in the suburbs of our towns and cities, and 

 on the borders of our great rivers and railroads, in the older 

 parts of the Union, the rapidity with which cottages and 

 villa residences are increasing, each one of which costs 

 from three, to thirty or forty thousand dollars, will find 

 that the aggregate amount of money expended in American 

 rural homes, for the last ten years, is perhaps larger than 

 has been spent in any part of the world. Our Anglo- 

 Saxon nature leads our successful business men always to 

 look forward to a home out of the city; and the ease with 

 which freehold property may be obtained here offers every 

 encouragement to the growth of the natural instinct for 

 landed proprietorship.! 



This large class of citizens turning country folk, which 

 every season's revolution is increasing, which every suc- 

 cessful business year greatly augments, and every fortune 

 made in California helps to swell in number, is one which, 

 perhaps, spends its means more freely, and with more of 

 the feeling of getting its full value, than any other class. 



* Original date of February, 1852. 



t Such country estates have multiplied many fold and have increased 

 enormously in magnificence by the expenditure of vast sums of money in 

 the 69 years since this essay was written. -- F. A. \Y. 



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