n. 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF GOOD HOUSES. 



February, 1848. 



A VERY little observation will convince any one that, in the 

 United States, a new era, in Domestic Architecture, is already 

 commenced. A few years ago, and all our houses, with rare excep- 

 tions, were built upon the most meagre plan. A shelter from the 

 inclemencies of the weather ; space enough in which to eat, drink 

 and sleep; perhaps some excellence of mechanical workmanship 

 in the details ; these were the characteristic features of the great 

 mass of our dwelling-houses and especially country houses a few 

 years ago. 



A dwelling-house, for a civilized man, built with no higher 

 aspirations than these, we look upon with the same feelings that 

 inspire us when we behold the Indian, who guards himself against 

 heat and cold by that primitive, and, as he considers it, sufficient 

 costume a blanket. An unmeaning pile of wood, or stone, serves 

 as a shelter to the bodily frame of man ; it does the same for the 

 brute animals that serve him ; the blanket covers the skin of the 

 savage from the harshness of the elements, as the thick shaggy coat 

 protects the beasts he hunts in the forest. But these are only mani- 

 festations of the grosser wants of life ; and the mind of the civilized 

 and cultivated man as naturally manifests itself in fitting, appro- 

 priate, and beautiful forms of habitation and costume, as it does in 

 fine and lofty written thought and uttered speech. 



Hence, as society advances beyond that condition, in which the 

 primary wants of human nature are satisfied, we naturally find that 

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