VI. 



OUR COUNTRY VILLAGES. 



June, 1850. 



WITHOUT any boasting, it may safely be said, that the natural 

 features of our common country (as the speakers in Congress 

 call her), are as agreeable and prepossessing as those of any other 

 land whether merry England, la belle France, or the German 

 fatherland. We have greater lakes, larger rivers, broader and more 

 fertile prairies than the old world can show ; and if the Alleghanies 

 are rather dwarfish when compared to the Alps, there are peaks and 

 summits, " castle hills " and volcanoes, in our great back-bone range 

 of the Pacific the Rocky Mountains which may safely hold up 

 their heads along with Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. 



Providence, then, has blessed this country our country with 

 "natural born" features, which we may look upon and be glad. 

 But how have we sought to deform the fair landscape here and there 

 by little, miserable shabby-looking towns and villages ; not misera- 

 ble and shabby-looking from the poverty and wretchedness of the 

 inhabitants for in no land is there more peace and plenty but 

 miserable and shabby-looking from the absence of taste, symmetry, 

 order, space, proportion, all that constitutes beauty. Ah, well and 

 truly did Cowper say, 



" God made the country, but man made the town." 

 For in the one, we every where see utility and beauty harmoniously 



