MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 251 



into my brain a delicious jumble of porches and gables 

 and broad roofs dappled over with the sunlight and 

 the shadows. I cannot doubt but that very many 

 others have had much the same experience. 



There is a class indeed (not very large, I should 

 hope) of both men and women, always afloat, who 

 find all their home appetites in those great caravan- 

 saries which we call hotels, and whose local attach- 

 ments must be of a very vague and illusory char- 

 acter : but I cannot fancy such among my readers 

 first, because these have no leisure to listen to what I 

 may say ; and next, because their sympathies must 

 be altogether remote from the topics I discuss. I 

 address myself rather to those who have some day 

 had thoughts of building houses of their own, and 

 who have invested the thought with a thousand 

 homely fancies. 



A low, gray, irregular range of buildings with a 

 multitude of gables, and here and there a turret lift- 

 ing above them broad windows blazing in the sun- 

 light, and windows darkened with trailing festoons 

 of some wall-creeper an ample hall of entrance, with 

 quaint stairway climbing to some landing lit with an 

 oriel a blue chamber, a green chamber, an oak 

 chamber rambling corridors opening upon yet other 

 chambers a great dim garret with the sunlight flash- 

 ing in through some dormer window upon roof-beams 



