CHAPTER XVI 

 HOW TO ARRANGE COUNTRY PLACES* 



HOW to lay out a country place? That is a question 

 about which we and our readers might have many 

 a long conversation, if we could be brought on 

 familiar terms, colloquially speaking, with all parts of the 

 Union where rural improvements are going on. As it is 

 we shall touch on a few leading points this month which 

 may be considered of universal application. 



These cardinal points within the bounds of a country 

 residence, are (taking health and pleasant locality for 

 granted), convenience, comfort, or social enjoyment, and 

 beauty; and we shall touch on them in a very rambling 

 manner. 



Innumerable are the mistakes of those novices in forming 

 country places, who reverse the order of these three condi- 

 tions, and placing beauty first (as, intellectually consid- 

 ered, it deserves to be), leave the useful, convenient, and 

 comfortable pretty much to themselves, or, at least, con- 

 sider them entitled only to a second place in their considera- 

 tion. In the country places which they create the casual 

 visitor may be struck with many beautiful effects; but 

 when a trifling observation has shown him that this beauty 

 is not the result of a harmony between the real and the 

 ideal, - - or, in other words, between the surface of things 

 intended to be seen and the things themselves, as they 

 minister to our daily wants, then all the pleasure vanishes 

 and the opposite feeling takes its place. 



To begin at the very root of things, the most defective 

 matter in laying out our country places (as we know from 

 experience) is the want of forethought and plan regarding 



* Original date of March, 1850. 

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