146 



ARCHITECTURE. 



BOOK I. 



of great towns in place of rustic innocence and simplicity*. 

 Such villages may please from their novelty when first erected ; 

 but they deserve praise in no other respect, however laudable 

 might be the intention of the proprietors in erecting them. 



SECT. VI. OF TOWNS AND CITIES. 



I might now proceed from villages to another modification 

 both of the forms and collections of the habitations of the 

 lower classes ; but these are foreign to my purpose. I shall, 

 however, make a few observations on the general effect and 

 management of towns and cities, because in some cases gentle- 

 men may have it in their power to promote their beauty or uti- 



* The evils resulting from this practice have not been sufficiently attended to. 

 Whenever a peasant can patiently suffer his neighbour to know his private penury 

 and dependence, his native and honourable pride is extinguished, and he soon 

 contemplates the parish-relief, not as a voluntary charity, but as a right which he 

 claims from the community to prolong his indolent existence. In this state, the 

 facilities of unprofitable conversation but contribute to extenuate and sanction his 

 idleness, and the industrious respectability of his family sinks into the merited con- 

 tempt of its unworthy chief. Hence one of the primary sources of rustic depra- 

 vity : and it ought to be an indispensable rule with all proprietors, to prevent a too 

 great familiarity among their villagers, and to enable them to conceal as much as 

 possible their little domestic arrangements from the prying eye and flippant remark 

 of their more independent neighbours. It is, perhaps, in part owing to the greater 

 number of isolated houses, and the smaller number of villages in Britain, that the 

 peasantry of this country are found more virtuous than that of any other in Europe. 



