OLD HOUSES AND THEIR INCLOSURES. 315 



remotely suggestive of the simple habits of rural life, 

 and have endeavored to make them look as much as 

 possible, with one hundredth part of the cost, like the 

 villa of a nobleman. So many of these ambitious 

 cottages have been reared in many of* our old streets, 

 as to have entirely destroyed that picturesque beauty 

 that made almost every route a pleasant landscape. 

 The street, once covered on all sides with those rural 

 scenes that charm every lover of the country, has be 

 come as tame as one of those new-made streets, laid 

 out by speculators, to be sold in lots under the hammer 

 of the auctioneer. 



The New England people have been repeatedly char 

 acterized as wanting in taste ; and this deficiency is 

 supposed to be exemplified in the entire absence of 

 ornamental work about our old houses and their inclos- 

 ures. It is a maxim that a person who is deficient in 

 taste always runs to an extreme in the use of ornaments, 

 whenever he attempts to use them. Hence the pro 

 fusely decorated houses of the present generation do 

 not evince any positive improvement in taste, when 

 compared with those of their predecessors. They are 

 simply a proof that the people of the present time have 

 more ambition ; but that want of taste, which a former 

 generation exhibited in their entire disregard of ornament, 

 is manifested in their successors, by their profuse and in 

 discriminate use of it. That great progress has been 

 made throughout the land, will not be denied; but the 

 present state of public taste is perhaps a transition 

 state from an age of comparative rudeness to one of 

 perfected improvement. 



The object of these remarks is not to deride wealth, 

 but to condemn the ostentation of wealth that does not 

 exist, instead of guiding oneself by a careful study of 



