240 RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



Our readers most interested in such matters as this (and, taking 

 our principal cities together, it is a pretty large class), will be inter- 

 ested to know what is the beau-ideal of these companies, who un- 

 dertake to buy tracts of land, lay them out in the best manner, and 

 form the most complete and attractive rural villages, in order to 

 tempt those tired of the wayworn life of sidewalks, into a neighbor- 

 hood where, without losing society, they can see the horizon, breathe 

 the fresh air, and walk upon elastic greensward. 



Well, the beau-ideal of these newly-planned villages is not down 

 to the zero of dirty lanes and shadeless roadsides ; but it rises, we 

 are sorry to say, no higher than streets, lined on each side with 

 shade-trees, and bordered with rows of houses. For the most part, 

 those houses cottages, we presume are to be built on fifty-feet 

 lots ; or if any buyer is not satisfied with that amount of elbow room, 

 he may buy two lots, though certain that his neighbor will still be 

 within twenty feet of his fence. And this is the sum total of the 

 rural beauty, convenience, and comfort, of the latest plan for a rural 

 village in the Union.* The buyer gets nothing more than he has 

 in town, save his little patch of back and front yard, a little peep 

 down the street, looking one way at the river, and the other way at 

 the sky. So far from gaining any thing which all inhabitants of a 

 village should gain by the combination, one of these new villagers 

 actually loses ; for if he were to go by himself, he would buy land 

 cheaper, and have a fresh landscape of fields and hills around him, 

 instead of houses on all sides, almost as closely placed as in the city, 

 which he has endeavored to fly from. 



Now a rural village newly planned in the suburbs of a great 

 city, and planned, too, specially for those whose circumstances will 

 allow them to own a tasteful cottage in such a village should pre- 

 sent attractions much higher than this. It should aim at something 

 higher than mere rows of houses upon streets crossing each other at 

 right angles, and bordered with shade-trees. Any one may find as 

 good shade-trees, and much better houses, in certain streets of the 

 city which he leaves behind him ; and if he is to give up fifty con- 



* We say plan, but we do not mean to include in this such villages aa 

 Northampton, Brookline, <fec., beautiful and tasteful as they are. But they 

 are in Massachusetts ! 



