254 RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



spicuous. We scarcely know any thing more uncomfortable to the 

 eye, than to approach the sunny side of a house in one of our bril- 

 liant midsummer days, when it revels in the fashionable purity of its 

 color. It is absolutely painful. Nature, full of kindness for man, has 

 covered most of the surface that meets his eye in the country, with 

 a soft green hue at once the most refreshing and most grateful to 

 the eye. These habitations that we have referred to, appear to be 

 colored on the very opposite principle, and one needs, in broad sun- 

 shine, to turn his eyes away to relieve them by a glimpse of the 

 soft and refreshing shades that every where pervade the trees, the 

 grass, and the surface of the earth. 



Our second objection to white is, that it does not harmonize 

 with the country, and thereby mars the effect of rural landscapes. 

 Much of the beauty of landscape depends on what painters call 

 breadth of tone which is caused by broad masses of colors that 

 harmonize and blend agreeably together. Nothing tends to destroy 

 breadth of tone so much as any object of considerable size, and of a 

 brilliant white. It stands harshly apart from all the soft shades of 

 the scene. Hence landscape painters always studiously avoid the 

 introduction of white in their buildings, and give them instead, 

 some neutral tint a tint which unites or contrasts agreeably with 

 the color of trees and grass, and which seems to blend into other 

 parts of natural landscape, instead of being a discordant note in the 

 general harmony. 



There is always, perhaps, something not quite agreeable in ob- 

 jects of a dazzling whiteness, when brought into contrast with other 

 colors. Mr. Price, in his essays on the Beautiful and Picturesque, 

 conceived that very white teeth gave a silly expression to the coun- 

 tenance and brings forward, in illustration of it, the well-known 

 soubriquet which Horace Walpole bestowed on one of his acquaint- 

 ances " the gentleman with the foolish teeth." 



No one is successful in rural improvements, who does not study 

 nature, and take her for the basis of his practice. Now, in natural 

 landscape, any thing like strong and bright colors is seldom seen, 

 except in very minute portions, and least of all pure white chiefly 

 appearing in small objects like flowers. The practical rule which 

 should be deduced from this, is, to avoid all those colors which na- 



