CHAPTER XXXII 



ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF COUNTRY 



VILLAGES * 



" ~|~F you or any man of taste wish to have a fit of the 

 blues let him come to the village of .1 have 

 just settled here; and all my ideas of rural beauty 

 have been put to flight by what I see around me every day. 

 Old wooden houses out of repair, and looking rickety and 

 dejected; new wooden houses, distressingly lean in their 

 proportions, chalky white in their clapboards, and spinachy 

 green in their blinds. The church is absolutely hideous, - 

 a long box of cardboard, with a huge pepperbox on the top. 

 There is not a tree in the streets; and if it were not for fields 

 of refreshing verdure that surround the place, I should have 

 the ophthalmia as well as the blue-devils. Is there no way 

 of instilling some rudiments of taste into the minds of 

 dwellers in remote country places?" 



We beg our correspondent, from whose letter we quote the 

 above paragraph, not to despair. There are always wise 

 and good purposes hidden in the most common events of 

 life; and we have no doubt Providence has sent him to the 

 village of - , as an apostle of taste, to instil some ideas 

 of beauty and fitness into the minds of its inhabitants. 



That the aspect of a large part of our rural villages, out of 

 New England, is distressing to a man of taste is undeniable. 

 Not from want of means; for the inhabitants of these 

 villages are thriving, industrious people, and poverty is 

 very little known there. Not from want of materials; for 

 both nature and the useful arts are ready to give them 

 everything needful, to impart a cheerful, tasteful, and in- 

 viting aspect to their homes; but simply from a poverty of 



* Original date of June, 1849. 

 333 



