RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 
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not unlike that of the latter edifice. The entrance porch is 
always preserved, and the bay window jutting out from the 
best apartment, gives variety, and an agreeable expression of 
use and enjoyment, to almost every specimen of the old Eng- 
lish cottage. 
Perhaps the most striking feature of this charming 
style as we see it in the best old English cottages, is the 
pointed gable. This feature, which grows out of the high 
roofs adopted, not only appears in the two ends of the main 
building, but terminates every wing or projection of almost 
any size that joins to the principal body of the house. The 
gables are either of stone or brick, with a handsome moulded 
coping, or they are finished with the widely projecting roof 
of wood, and verge boards , carved in a fanciful and highly 
decorative shape. In either case, the point or apex is 
crowned by a finial, or ornamented octagonal shaft, render- 
ing the gable one of the greatest sources of interest in these 
dwellings. The projecting roof renders the walls always dry. 
The porch, the labelled windows, the chimney shafts, and 
the ornamented gables, being the essential features in the 
composition of the English cottage style, it is evident that 
this mode of building is highly expressive of purpose, for 
country residences of almost every description and size, from 
the humblest peasant’s cottage, to the beautiful and pictu- 
resque villa of the retired gentleman of fortune. In the 
simple form of the cottage, the whole may be constructed of 
wood very cheaply, and in the more elaborate villa residence, 
stone, or brick and cement may be preferred, as being more 
permanent. No style so readily admits of enrichment as 
that of the old English cottage when on a considerable scale ; 
and by the addition of pointed verandas, bay windows, and 
dormer-windows, by the introduction of mull ions and tracery 
