240 RUKAL ARCHITECTURE. 



Our readers most interested in such matters as this (and, taking 

 our principal cities together,, it is a pretty large class), will be inter- 

 ,ested to know what is the beku-ideal of these companies, who, un- 

 dertake to buy tracts of land, lay them out in tlje best manner, and 

 form the most complete and attractive rural villages, in order to 

 tempt those tired of the wayworn litei of sidewalks, into a neighbor-, 

 hood where, without losing society, they can see the horizon, breathe 

 the freah air, and walk upon elastic greensward. 



Well, the beau-ideal of these newly-planned villages is not down 

 to the zero of dirty lanes aiad shadeless roadsides ; but it rises, we 

 are sorry to say, no higber than streets, lined on each side with 

 shade-trees, and bordered with rows of houses. For the most part,, 

 those houses^cottages, we presume— are to be built, on fifty-feet, 

 lots ; or if any buyer is not satisfied with^that amount of elbow: room,, 

 he may buy two lots, though certain that his neighbor will stiU be 

 within twenty feet of his fence. , And this is the sum total of the 

 rural beauty, convenience, and comfort, of the latest plan for a rural 

 village in the Union.* The buyer gets nothing more than Tie has 

 in* town, save his little patch of back and front yard, a little peep, 

 down the street, looking one way at the river, and the other way at 

 the sky. So far from gaining any thing which all inhabitants of; a 

 village should gain by the combination, one of these new villagers 

 actually loses ; for if he were to go by himself, "he would b"y laiid . 

 cheaper, and have a fresh landscape of fields and hills around him, 

 instead of houses on all sides, alinost as, plosely placed as in the city, 

 which he has endeavored to fly from. 



Now a rural village — newly planned in the suburbs of a gi-eat 

 city, and .planned, too, specially for those wjiose circumstances will 

 allow them to own a tasteful cdttage in such a village — should pre- 

 sent attractions much highfer than this. It should aim at soiiiething 

 higher than mere rows of houses upon streets crossing each otlier at 

 right angles, and bordered with shade-trees. Any one may find as 

 good shade-trees, and much better houses, in certain streets of the 

 city which he leaves behind him ; and if he is to give up fifty eon- 



* We say plan, tut we do not mean to , inoluda in this such village^ as 

 Northampton, BrooHine, tfec, beautiful and tasteful as they are. But thej" 

 are in Massachusetts ! 



