246 RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



sad, and would have made a true Greek believe that the gods who 

 preside over beauty and harmony, had for ever abandoned the new 

 world ! 



But the Greek temple disease has passed its crisis. The people 

 have survived it. Some few buildings of simple forms, and conve- 

 nient arrangements, that stood here and there over the country, ut- 

 tering silent rebukes, perhaps had something to do with bringing us 

 to just notions of fitness and propriety. Many of the perishable 

 wooden porticoes have fallen down ; many more will soon do so ; 

 and many have been pulled down, and replaced by less pretending 

 piazzas or verandas. 



Yet we are now obliged to confess, that we see strong symptoms 

 manifesting themselves of a second disease, which is to disturb the 

 architectural growth of our people. We feel that we shall not be 

 able to avert it, but perhaps, by exhibiting a diagnosis of the symp- 

 toms, we may prevent its extending so widely as it might other- 

 wise do. 



We allude to the mania just springing up for a kind of spurious 

 rural Gothic cottage. It is nothing more than a miserable wooden 

 thing, tricked out with flimsy verge-boards, and unmeaning gables. 

 It has nothing of the true character of the cottage it seeks to imi- 

 tate. It bears the same relation to it that a child's toy-house does 

 to a real and substantial habitation. 



If we inquire into the cause of these architectural abortions, 

 either Grecian or Gothic, we shall find that they always arise from 

 a poverty of ideas on the subject of style in architecture. The no- 

 vice in architecture always supposes, when he builds a common 

 house, and decorates it with the showiest ornaments of a certain 

 style, that he has erected an edifice in that style. He deludes him- 

 self in the same manner as the schoolboy who, with his gaudy paper 

 cap and tin sword, imagines himself a great general. We build a 

 miserable shed, make one of its ends a portico with Ionic columns, 

 and call it a temple in the Greek style. At the same time, it has 

 none of the proportions, nothing of the size, solidity, and perfection 

 of details, and probably few or none of the remaining decorations 

 of that style. 



So too, we now see erected a wooden cottage of a few feet in 



