Various Accessories 235 



Summer houses should never be made of materials that 

 will harbor dust, dirt, or insects. Moss or heather linings 

 will never be quite clean, and all sorts of insects will be 

 encouraged to lodge in them. Rough cushioned seats and 

 backs of green baize in arbors that are open to the weather 

 will be alike bad in the same way. And wood with the 

 rough bark on is only a trifle better. The best lining for 

 them is small hazel or oak boughs about an inch in diameter, 

 unstripped of their bark which will be quite smooth, and 

 sawn to various lengths, so as to be fixed up to some fancy 

 figures of no very elaborate pattern. This will be clean, 

 dry, and ill adapted for the encouragement of insects, also 

 very durable, which none of the other things named are at 

 all likely to be. 



In point of taste summer houses should be concealed from 

 the windows of a dwelling or correspond with it in style. A 

 rustic arbor will not, however, be an unfit accompaniment 

 to a building in the Swiss character or even to some kinds of 

 Gothic if its details be accommodated thereto. But it would 

 be entirely inharmonious with a building in the Grecian or 

 Italian manner which demands more artistic and classical 

 attendants. Everything rustic should, if employed at all, 

 be planted out from the view of such houses. And perhaps 

 the fittest form in general for a garden decoration of this sort 

 will be some truly rustic object, made of rough wood, un- 

 barked, thatched with reeds or heather, and partly covered 

 with climbers, but partly supported by trees and shrubs, out 

 of the front of which it should appear to spring. In other 

 cases summer houses of purely classical design may be used 

 with the very best effect on ground developed in a formal 

 manner and in accompaniment with a house of Italian style. 



Fig. 65 represents the elevation and ground plan of a rus- 

 tic summer house which I erected for David Bromilow, Esq., 



