CHAPTER XXXI 

 OUR COUNTRY VILLAGES* 



WITHOUT any boasting it may safely be said that 

 the natural features of our common country (as 

 the speakers in Congress call her) are as agreeable 

 and prepossessing as those of any other land, whether merry 

 England, la belle France, or the German fatherland. We 

 have greater lakes, larger rivers, broader and more fertile 

 prairies than the old world can show; and if the Alleghanies 

 are rather dwarfish when compared to the Alps, there are 

 peaks and summits, "castle hills" and volcanoes, in our 

 great backbone range of the Pacific - - the Rocky Moun- 

 tains - - which may safely hold up their heads along with 

 Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. 



Providence, then, has blessed this country - - our coun- 

 try --with "natural born" features which we may look 

 upon and be glad. But how have we sought to deform the 

 fair landscape here and there by little, miserable shabby- 

 looking towns and villages; not miserable and shabby- 

 looking from the poverty and wretchedness of the inhabi- 

 tants - for in no land is there more peace and plenty - 

 but miserable and shabby-looking from the absence of taste, 

 symmetry, order, space, proportion, - - all that constitutes 

 beauty. Ah, well and truly did Cowper say, 



"God made Ihc country, but man made the town." 



For in the one we everywhere see utility and beauty har- 

 moniously combined, while the other presents us but too 

 often the reverse, that is to say, the marriage of utility and 

 deformity. 



Some of our readers may remind us that we have already 



* Original date of June, 1850. 

 323 



