348 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
The English cottage style, or what we have denominated 
Rural Gothic , contains within itself all the most striking 
and peculiar elements of the beautiful and picturesque in 
its exterior, while it admits of the greatest possible variety 
of accommodation and convenience in internal arrange- 
ment. 
In its general composition, Rural Gothic really differs 
from the Tudor style more in that general simplicity 
which serves to distinguish a cottage or villa of moderate 
size from a mansion, than in any marked character of its 
own. The square-headed windows preserve the same 
form, and display the Gothic label and mullions, though 
the more expensive finish of decorative tracery is fre- 
quently omitted. Diagonal or latticed lights are also more 
commonly seen in the cottage style than in the mansion. 
The general form and arrangement of the building, though 
of course much reduced, is 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 English 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 
exterior is massive and picturesque, in the simplest taste of the Elizabethan 
age, and being built amidst a fine oak wood, of the dark rough stone of the 
neighborhood, it has at once the appearance of considerable antiquity. The 
interior is constructed and fitted up throughout in the same feeling, — with 
harmonious wainscoting,, quaint carving, massive chimney pieces, and old 
furniture and armor. Indeed, we doubt if there is, at the present moment 
any recent private residence, even in England, where the spirit of the antique 
la more entirely carried out, and where one may more easily fancy himself in 
one of those “ mansions builded curiously” of our ancestors in the time of 
“ good Queen Bess '? 
