174 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



leani to give the charm of harmonic expression to all the 

 creations of art that relate to landscape. 



These rules require the adaptation of the style of the build- 

 ing to the character of the scenes around it ; the flat-roofed 

 Italian houses to the level plain ; the steep-roofed Swiss cot- 

 tages to rugged and mountainous situations, and the amount 

 of external finish to the cliaracter of the natural objects and 

 of other buildings around it. They would consider also 

 whether the house is designed for the city or the country, 

 the rural districts or the suburbs. They pay still further 

 respect to the color which is to be given to its exterior. I 

 am disposed to believe that the lighter tints approaching to 

 white are well calculated to produce that cheerful aspect 

 which we admire in our New England villages. But in 

 rustic and wooded situations, and in the thinly inhabited 

 parts of the country, the neutral tints are preferable, because 

 the lighter ones do not so agreeably harmonize with the 

 general face of nature. 



There is something, as everyone may have observed, about 

 an old house that has never been painted, which affects every 

 beholder with a peculiar sensation of beauty. Does not this 

 fact indicate that there is a quality in the grey tint of old 

 houses that harmonizes with our ideas of the beautiful in 

 nature ? And might we not take a hint from it when we 

 would select a color for our buildings and monumental edifices ? 

 Nature is full of instructions which are apt to be overlooked 

 or despised, until they have been, perhaps, very imperfectly 

 transferred to canvas. Profiting by these lessons, we might 

 infer, that the best colors for isolated country houses are 

 those of rocks overgrown with lichens, of the bark of trees, 

 of weather-stained fences, or of the earth and its general 

 coverings. 



In our country villages we sometimes meet with cottages 

 rather highly finished, having piazzas supported by the rude 

 trunks of trees, merely stripped of their bark, and set up 

 with the stumps of their amputated limbs projecting on all 

 sides from top to bottom. Of all attempts to harmonize a 

 cottage with nature this is the most absurd. The act of 



