S82 
RURAL HOURS. 
sucli tenants ; where the inmates are idle and shiftless, they are 
wretched holes, full of disorder and filth. 
Next to the log- cabin, in our architectural history, comes its 
very opposite, the lank and lean style, the shallow order, which 
aimed at rising far above the lowly log-cottage ; proud of a tall 
front and two stories, proud of twice too many windows, but quite 
indifferent to all rules and proportions, to all appearance of com- 
fort and snugness ; houses of this kind look as if the winter wind 
must blow quite through them. The roof presses directly upon 
the upper tier of windows, and looks as though it had been 
stretched to meet the walls, scarcely projecting enough, one would 
think, for safety, eaves being thought a useless luxury ; the Avin- 
dow-frames are as scant as possible, and set on the very surface 
of the building, and there is neither porch nor piazza at the door. 
Such is the shallow in its simplest form, but it is often seen in a 
very elaborate state — and to speak frankly, when this is the case, 
what was before ungainly and comfortless in aspect, becomes glar- 
ingly ridiculous. In instances of this kind, we find the shalloiv- 
ornate assuming the Grecian portico, running up sometimes one 
wing, sometimes two ; pipe-stem columns one-fiftieth of their 
height in diameter, and larger, perhaps, in the centre than at 
either extremity, stand trembling beneath a pediment which, pos- 
sibly, contains a good-sized bed-room, with a window in the apex. 
Such buildings are frequently surrounded with a very fanciful 
paling of one sort or other. One looks into the barn-yard of such 
a house with anxious misgivings, lest the geese should be found 
all neck, the cocks all tail, the pigs with longer noses, the ponies 
with longer ears than are usually thought becoming. 
Succeeding to the common shallow, and coeval with the shal 
