Piazzas 
shed-encircled boxes which preceded them. 
And they are, perhaps, even more distressing 
to the mind ; for the old house had at least 
the merit of frank simplicity, while the new 
one has often the great demerit of seeming a 
labored effort after as much eccentricity as 
possible. Yet, taking good and bad to- 
gether, the general improvement which has 
marked our architecture in recent years can 
nowhere be more clearly read than in our 
country-homes. And it is a most significant 
proof of the genuine, vital, and promising 
character of our progress that these homes 
should have been so greatly improved, not 
through imitation of foreign models, but 
through the development of indigenous 
fashions, and the incorporation — despite 
difficulties which might perhaps have been 
thought insuperable — of the “ vernacular ’ ’ 
piazza. 
135 
