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CrilZENS RETIRING TO THE COUNTRY. 



I 



February, 1852. 



ra former volume we offered a few words to our readers on the 

 subject of choosing a country-seat. As the subject was only 

 slightly touched upon, we propose to say something more regarding 

 it now. 



There are few or no magnificent country-seats in America, if we 

 take as a standard such residences as Chatsworth, Woburn, Blen- 

 heim, and other well known English places with parks a dozen 

 miles round, and palaces in their midst larger than our largest pub- 

 lic buildings. But any one who notices in the suburbs of our towns 

 and cities, and on the borders of our great rivers and railroads, in 

 the older parts of the Union, the rapidity with which cottages and 

 villa residences are increasing, each one of which costs from three, 

 to thirty or forty thousand dollars, will find that the aggregate 

 amount of money expended in American rural homes, for the last 

 ten years, is perhaps larger than has been spent in any part of the 

 world. Our Anglo-Saxon nature leads our successful business men 

 always to look forward to a home out of the city ;. and the ease with 

 which freehold property may be obtained here, offers every encour- 

 agement to the growth of the natural instinct for landed proprietoi- 

 ship. 



This large class of citizens turning country-folk, which every sea- 

 son's revolution is increasing, which every successful business year 

 greatly augments, and every fortune made in California helps to 

 swell in number, is one which, perhaps, spends its means more freely, 



