84 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



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 improve. 

 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 shingles to 

 rot, no glued and puttied and painted gimcrackery, to warp 

 and crack and moulder ; and can never look so shabby, and 

 desolate, and dreary, as will nine-tenths of the buildings of 

 the same denomination now erecting about New York, almost 

 as soon as they lose the raw, cheerless, impostor-like airs 

 which seem almost inseparable from their newness. 



