246 RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



sad, and would have made a true Greet believe that the gods who 

 preside over bbauty and harmony, had for ever abandoned' the new 

 , world ! 



But the Greet temple disease has passed its crisis. The people 

 have survived it. .Some few buildings of simple forms, and conve- 

 nient aiTangements, that stood here and there over the country, ut- 

 tering silent rebuies, perhaps had something to do with bringing us 

 to just notions of fitness and pfbpriety. Many of the perishable 

 wooden porticoes have fallen down ; many more will soon do so ; 

 and many have been pulled down, and replaced by less preteiiding 

 . piazzas or verandas. 



Yet we are now obliged to confess that we see strong symptoms 

 manifesting themselves of a second disease, which is to disturb the 

 architectural growth of our people. We feel that we shall not be 

 able to avert it, but perhaps, by exhibiting a diagnosis of the symp- 

 toms, we may prevent its extending so widely as it might other- 

 wise do. 



We allude to the mania just springing up for a tlnd of spurious 

 '■rural Gothic cottage. '. It is nothing more than a miserable wooden 

 thing, tricted out with flimsy verg^-bbards, and unmeaning gables. 

 It has nothing of the true character of the cottage it: sects to imi- 

 tate. It bears the same relation to it that a child's toy-house does, 

 to a real and substantial habitation. 



If we inquire iii to the .cause of these architectural abortions, 

 'iither Grecian oi? Gothic, we shall find thait they always arise from 

 a poverty of ideas on the sulyect of style in. architecture. The no- 

 vice in architectura always supposes, when he builds a common 

 house, and decorates it with the showiest ornaments of a certain 

 style, that he has erected an edifice in that style. He deludes him- 

 self inthe same manner as the schoolboy who, with his gaudy paper 

 cap and tin sword, imagines hiniself a great general. We build -a 

 miserable shed, mate one of its ends a portico with Ionic columns, 

 and call it a temple in the Greet style. At the same time,'it has 

 none of the proportions, nothing of the size, solidity, and perfection 

 of details, and probably few or none of the remaining decorations 

 of that style. 



So too, we now see erected a wooden cottage of a few feet in 



