CHAPTER XV 



HOW TO CHOOSE A SITE FOR A COUNTRY 



SEAT* 



HOW to choose the site for a country house is a sub- 

 ject now occupying the thoughts of many of our 

 countrymen, and therefore is not undeserving a 

 few words from us at the present moment. 



The greater part of those who build country seats in the 

 United States are citizens who retire from the active pur- 

 suits of town to enjoy, in the most rational way possible, 

 the fortunes accumulated there, that is to say in the crea- 

 tion of beautiful and agreeable rural homes. 



Whatever may be the natural taste of this class, their 

 avocations have not permitted them to become familiar 

 with the difficulties to be encountered in making a new 

 place or the most successful way of accomplishing all that 

 they propose to themselves. Hence we not unfrequently 

 see a very complete house surrounded for years by very 

 unfinished and meagre grounds. Weary with the labor and 

 expense of levelling earth, opening roads and walks, and 

 clothing a naked place with new plantations, all of which he 

 finds far less easily accomplished than building brick walls 

 in the city, the once sanguine improver often abates his 

 energy, and loses his interest in the embellishment of his 

 grounds before his plans are half perfected. 



All this arises from a general disposition to underrate the 

 difficulty and cost of making plantations and laying the 

 groundwork of a complete country residence. Landscape 

 gardening, where all its elements require to be newly ar- 

 ranged, where the scenery of a place requires to be almost 



* Original date of December, 1847. The problem is still a live one. 

 But the old English term "country seat" has disappeared from American 

 use. We now say "country place," "country home," or some more 

 pretentious persons speak of their "country estates." The average city 

 man, however, prefers above all else to refer to "my farm." - F. A. W. 



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