ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 83 



order to mark distinctly its faces, and that it be 

 bound in firmly, (a thing which the engraver has 

 omitted to do,) with such long stones as are available. 

 A boulder sufficiently round to crown the structure 

 may be found in almost any rod of old country wall ; 

 and if it be well covered with lichens, so much the 

 better. The great error in such structures, is in at- 

 tempting too great nicety, which, by contrast with 

 the homely farmwork around it, oflends more than it 

 gratifies. In humble art, as well as in the highest 

 art, there must be keeping. 



But though finical nicety is to be avoided, and 

 such hammering out of faces, as to increase largely 

 the expense, and defeat the economy which should 

 declare itself unmistakably in all rural decoration, 

 there should be no sacrifice of solidity. A column 

 that will not stand for years, had better never be 

 built. 



The country wall-layers, ordinarily, are indisposed 

 to attempt such work, either doubting their own 

 capacity, or considering it an encroachment upon the 

 province of the mason. The consequence has been, 

 in ray own experience, that of some half-dozen or 

 more which stand here and there about the fields at 

 Edgewood, every one has been laid up with my own 

 hands ; and I may aver, with some pride, that after 

 eight or ten winters of frost, they still stand firmly 



