VI. 



OUE COUNTEY VILLAGES. 



June, 1850. 



WITHOUT any boasting, it may safely be said, that the natural 

 features of our common eouhtry (as the speakers in Congress 

 call her), are as agreeable and prepossessing as those of anydother 

 land — whfether merry England, ; la belle France, or the German 

 fatherland. We have greater lakes, larget rivers, broader and more ' 

 fertile prairies than the old world can show ; and if the Alleghanies 

 are rather dwarfish when compared to the Alps, there are peaks and' 

 summits, " castle hills"' and ■volcanoes, in our great back-bone range' 

 of the" Pacific — the Eocky Mountains^ — which may, safely hold up 

 their heads along with MOnt Blanc and the Jungfrau. r V ' 



Providence, then, has blessed this country — our country— -wtffift 

 "natural bom" features, which we ihay look upon and be glad. 

 But how have we sought to deform the fajr landscape here and there 

 by little, miserable shabby-looking towns and villages ; not misera- 

 ble and shabby-looking from the poverty and wretchedness of the 

 inhabitants — for in no land is there more peace and plenty — ^but 

 miserable and shabby-looking from the absence of taste, symmetry, 

 order, spacCj proportion,^ail that constitutes beauty. Ah, welland' 

 truly did Cowper sa;y, , ' . 



"God made the conntiy, but man made the town."' - V- 



For in the one, we .every where see 'utility and beauty harmonioiKly.^ 



