ioo Frederick Law Olmsted 



not only to philanthropists and men of taste, but to specula- 

 tors and men of business. 



After leaving the park, we ascended a hill, from the top 

 of which we had a fine view of Liverpool and Birkenhead. 

 Its sides were covered with villas, with little gardens about 

 them. The architecture was generally less fantastic, and the 

 style and materials of building more substantial than is 

 usually employed in the same class of residences with us. 

 Yet there was a good deal of the same stuck up and uneasy 

 pretentious air about them that the suburban houses of our 

 own city people so commonly have. Possibly this is the 

 effect of association, in my mind, of steady, reliable worth 

 and friendship with plain or old-fashioned dwellings, for I 

 often find it difficult to discover in the buildings themselves 

 the element of such expression. I am inclined to think it is 

 more generally owing to some disunity in the design, often, 

 perhaps, to a want of keeping between the mansion and its 

 grounds or its situation. The architect and the gardener do 

 not understand each other, and commonly the owner or 

 resident is totally at variance in his tastes and intentions 

 from both ; or the man whose ideas the plan is made to serve, 

 or who pays for it, has no true independent taste, but had 

 fancies to be accommodated, which only follow confusedly 

 after custom or fashion. I think, with Ruskin, it is a pity 

 that every man's house cannot be really his own, and that 

 he can not make all that is true, beautiful, and good in his 

 own character, tastes, pursuits, and history manifest in it. 



But however fanciful and uncomfortable many of the 

 villa houses about Liverpool and Birkenhead appear at first 

 sight, the substantial and thorough manner in which most 

 of them are built will atone for many faults. The friendship 

 of nature has been secured to them. Dampness, heat, cold, 

 will be welcome to do their best. Every day they will im- 

 prove. In fifty or a hundred years fashions may change, 

 and they will appear, perhaps, quaint, possibly grotesque; 

 but still strong, home-like, and hospitable. They have no 



