350 B-ural Architecture. 
RURAL ARCHITECTURE 
See Plate. 
The taste for villas and cottage residences, for the last few 
years, has undergone a great change. Formerly, when any at- 
tempt at style was made, every dwelling was formed without the 
thought of fitness or propriety, after some Grecian model. Now, 
of late years, the rural Gothic seems to prevail, and with the 
same ambitious desire to make every building, no matter how 
humble, complete in all its parts — the same unmeaning expression 
is stamped on all. 
"The general characteristics of a residence must be deter- 
mined," says Ranlett, " by the taste, habits and circumstances of 
the family who are to occupy it. A cottage indicates a disposi- 
tion in the proprietor to live within his income and to appropriate 
his means rather for the convenience and comfort of his family, 
than for show which he is ill prepared to sustain." 
Few men who build know what they in reality want; the 
carpenter, therefore, rather than the architect is consulted, and 
with the idea, too common with many of the former where mis- 
taken ideas of profuseness of decoration for beauty of expression 
oftAi destroy the completeness, of a very well arranged plan. 
Some very beautiful surburban residences, in the form of villas 
and cottages, have been erected in the vicinity of this city within 
a few years, and the improvement in rural architecture has been 
very great and added much to the improvement and appearance 
of the suburbs; but they all fall far short in show and costliness, 
when compared with the residence of P. T. Burnum, Esq., near 
Bridgeport, Connecticut, a figure of which accompanies this 
number; and the following full description of the same, we have 
extracted from the Farmer and Mechanic. 
IKANISTAN — THE COUNTRY SEAT OF P. T. BAKNUM, ESQ. 
We this week present our readers with a beautiful specimen of 
oriental architecture, in the elegant villa of the enterprising pro- 
prietor of the American Museum of this city, and recently erected 
by him, as a country seat, near Bridgeport, Conn. 
