254 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



economy as well as bad taste to sacrifice them to any 

 craving for newness. In the brick, if well laid, a 

 man may be sure of stanchness ; and in the stone, 

 with the lichens of years upon it, he has a mellowness 

 of tone which not all the arts of the decorators can 

 reach. But even upon walls of such material, es- 

 pecially if they carry the blotches of age, it will 

 never do to engraft the grandiose designs of the 

 modern builders. If a country liver be really am- 

 bitious to match all the pretensions of the latest arch- 

 itecture in respect of high ceilings and mansard-roofs, 

 let him begin by pulling down ; but if his aim be of 

 that finer temper which seeks to qualify what is old 

 by enlargement of dimensions and by such simple 

 decorative features as shall add a piquancy to the 

 wrinkles of age even as the twist of some sober- 

 colored ribbbon will set off some be-capped and wid- 

 owed face more attractively than all the snow-flake 

 haberdashery that could be devised let him cherish 

 all the quaintness that is due to years, and seek only 

 to magnify and illustrate it by such enlargements as 

 are in keeping with it, and by such sober adornments 

 as shall seem to be rather a restoration of old and lost 

 graces than the ambitious display of new ones. The 

 thing is feasible. It only wants an eye to perceive 

 the need, and a courage to discard the flash carpentry 

 of the day. 



