Rural Architecture — Marine Villa. 249 
of George IV at Brighton is called a Marine Villa, and is the 
only one so called in England. A Marine Cottage would 
probably be a better term, and one conveying as pleasing an idea 
of comfort and enjoyment as villa. Certainly we have no resi- 
dences in this country that deserve to be called villas, if we use 
the term with a recollection of the villas of Lucullus and Cicero, 
or of the modern Italians; it would be quite as proper to call the 
houses in Union Square, palaces, our meeting houses, cathe- 
drels, as to call a slight cottage orne, a villa. Guilt gives the 
smallest dimensions of a country house to which the term villa 
can with propriety be applied. He says that the smallest site of 
ground on which a villa can be designed, is 80 by 60 feet; any 
thing less than that is of course a cottage; the maximum size of 
a villa, is, according to the same authority, that of the Villa 
Capra of Paladio. Country houses of a greater magnitude should 
be styled mansions, excepting when they attain a certain size, 
when they become palaces. These distinctions are very necessary 
in architectural descriptions, or even in ordinary conversation, 
that when a house is alluded to, some definite idea of its char- 
acter may be conveyed by the term applied to it. From a natural 
peculiarity of applying magnificent terms of art to inconsiderable 
objects, and diminutive names to some of the grandest features of 
nature, great confusion is created in the minds of foreigners, who 
are as much amazed at the size of our ponds, hills and creeks, as 
they are amazed at the dimensions of our halls and villas. Some 
of our hills are mountains, our creeks, large rivers, our ponds, 
lakes, and our lakes, seas; while our mansions, are small houses, 
our villas, cottages, and our halls, narrow passages. Mr. Cooper 
has ridiculed the national habit of amplification, in some of his 
works, and given some very amusing instances of it in others. 
One of his works on England consists of letters addressed to 
different persons in America, and some of them addressed to 
of " Comstock Hall, Comstock, Mich." A short 
time after reading these letters, with a fine idea of Comstock Hall 
in our head, we happened to be traveling through Michigan, 
when one day the driver of the stage pointed to a small wooden 
house, surrounded by a slight wooden paling, and informed us 
that a relation of Mr. Cooper lived there, and on further enquiry 
we ascertained that that was " Comstock Hall,"' to an inhabitant 
of which Mr. Cooper had grandly addressed his letters from 
Europe, while ridiculing the magniloquence of his countrymen.'* 
