212 RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



" This, I apprehend, is the manner in which coarse society is 

 first started towards improvement ; for no objects, but those which 

 are sensible, can make any considerable impression on coarse 

 minds." 



The first motive which leads men to build good houses is, no 

 doubt, that of increasing largely their own comfort and happiness. 

 But it is easy to see that, in this country, where so many are able 

 to achieve a home for themselves, he who gives to the public a 

 more beautiful and tasteful model of a habitation than his neigh- 

 bors, is a benefactor to the cause of morality, good order, and the 

 improvement of society where he lives. To place before men rea- 

 sonable objects of ambition, and to dignify and exalt their aims, 

 cannot but be laudable in the sight of all. And in a country where 

 it is confessedly neither for the benefit of the community at large, 

 nor that of the succeeding generation, to amass and transmit great 

 fortunes, we would encourage a taste for beautiful and appropriate 

 architecture, as a means of promoting public virtue and the general 

 good. 



We have said beautiful and appropriate architecture not with- 

 out desiring that all our readers should feel the value of this latter 

 qualification as fully as we do. Among the many strivings after 

 architectural beauty, which we see daily made by our countrymen, 

 there are, of course, some failures, and only now and then examples 

 of perfect success. But the rock on which all novices split and 

 especially all men who have thought little of the subject, and who are 

 satisfied with a feeble imitation of some great example from other 

 countries this dangerous rock is want of fitness, or propriety. 

 Almost the first principle, certainly the grand principle, which an 

 apostle of architectural progress ought to preach in America, is, 

 " keep in mind PROPRIETY." Do not build your houses like tem- 

 ples, churches, or cathedrals. Let them be, characteristically, dwell- 

 ing-houses. And more than this ; always let their individuality of 

 purpose be fairly avowed ; let the cottage be a cottage the farm- 

 house a farm-house the villa a villa, and the mansion a mansion. 

 Do not attempt to build a dwelling upon your farm after the fashion 

 of the town-house of your friend, the city merchant ; do not at- 

 tempt to give the modest little cottage the ambitious air of the 



