MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE 



ceptance? For my own part, I think I began 

 to build, when as yet I stood in daily fear of 

 the ferule of a school-mistress, and when, 

 under a knitted Scotch school-cap, there came 

 into my brain a delicious jumble of porches 

 and gables and broad roofs dappled over with 

 the sunlight and shadows. I cannot doubt but 

 that very many others have had much the 

 same experience. 



There is a class indeed (not very large, I 

 should hope) of both men and women, always 

 afloat, who find all their home appetites in 

 those great caravansaries which we call hotels, 

 and whose local attachments must be of a very 

 vague and illusory character: but I cannot 

 fancy such among my readers — first, because 

 these have no leisure to listen to what I may 

 say; and next, because their sympathies must 

 be altogether remote from the topics I discuss. 

 I address myself rather to those who have 

 some day had thoughts of building houses of 

 their own, and who have invested the thought 

 with a thousand homely fancies. 



A low, gray, irregular range of buildings 

 with a multitude of gables, and here and there 

 a turret lifting above them — broad windows 

 blazing in the sunlight, and windows dark- 

 ened with trailing festoons of some wall- 



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