382 
RURAL HOURS. 
sucli tenants ; Avhere 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 shalloio 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 appeai'ance of com- 
fort and snugness ; houses of this kind look as if the -winter Avind 
must blow quite through them. The roof presses directly upon 
the upper tier of AvindoAvs, and looks, as though it had been 
stretched to meet the Avails, scarcely projecting enough, one Avould 
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, Avhen this is the case, 
what Avas before ungainly and comfortless in aspect, becomes glar- 
ingly ridiculous. In instances of this kind, Ave find the shallow- 
ornate assuming the Grecian portico, running up sometimes one 
Aving, sometimes tAvo ; 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 Avhich, pos- 
sibly, contains a good-sized bed-room, Avith a windoAv 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 Avith anxious misgivings, lest the geese should be found 
all neck, the cocks all tail, the pigs Avith longer noses, the ponies 
with longer ears than are usually thought becoming. 
Succeeding to the common shalloAV, and coeval Avith the shal 
