V. 



ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF COUNTRY VILLAGES. 



June, 1849. 

 " TF you, or any man of taste, wish to have a fit of the blues, let 



JL him come to the village of . I have just settled here 5 



and all my ideas of rural beauty have been put to flight by what I 

 see around me every day. Old wooden houses out of repair, and 

 looking rickety and dejected; new wooden houses, distressingly 

 lean in their proportions, chalky white in their clapboards, and 

 spinachy green in their blinds. The church is absolutely hideous, 

 a long box of card-board, with a huge pepper-box on the top. 

 There is not a tree in the streets ; and if it were not for fields of re- 

 freshing verdure that surround the place, I should have the ophthal- 

 mia as well as the blue-devils. Is there no way of instilling some 

 rudiments of taste into the minds of dwellers in remote country 

 places ? " 



We beg our correspondent, from whose letter we quote the above 

 paragraph, not to despair. There are always wise and good pur- 

 poses hidden in the most common events of life ; and we have no 

 doubt Providence has sent him to the village of , as an APOS- 

 TLE OF TASTE, to instil some ideas of beauty and fitness into the 

 minds of its inhabitants. 



That the aspect of a large part of our rural villages, out of New 

 England, is distressing to a man of taste, is undeniable. Not from 

 want of means ; for the inhabitants of these villages are thriving, 

 industrious people, and poverty is very little known there. Not 

 from want of materials ; for both nature and the useful arts are 



