AN AMERICAX FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



eral character, but I did not inquire for these, nor did I happen 

 to observe them. Certainly, in what I have noticed, it is a model 

 town, and may be held up as an example, not only to philanthro- 

 pists and men of taste, but to speculators 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 elements 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 accommoda- 

 ted, 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 cannot make all that is true, beautiful, 

 and good in his own character, tastes, pursuits, and history, man- 

 ifest 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 



