RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 
351 
judiciously made will tend to increase this beauty, or afford 
more facility for its display ; while it is equally evident 
that in the interior arrangement, including apartments of 
every description, superior opportunities are afforded for 
attaining internal comfort and convenience, as well as 
external effect. 
The ideas connected in our minds with Gothic 
architecture are of a highly romantic and poetical nature 
contrasted with the classical associations which the 
Greek and Roman styles suggest. Although our own 
country is nearly destitute of ruins and ancient time- 
worn edifices, yet the literature of Europe, and particularly 
of what we term the mother country, is so much our own, 
that we form a kind of delightful ideal acquaintance with 
the venerable castles, abbeys, and strongholds of the 
middle ages. Romantic as is the real history of those 
times and places, to our minds their charm is greatly 
enhanced by distance, by the poetry of legendary 
superstition, and the fascination of fictitious narrative. 
A castellated residence, therefore, in a wild and pictur- 
esque situation, may be interesting, not only from its being 
perfectly in keeping with surrounding nature, but from 
the delightful manner in which it awakens association? 
fraught with the most enticing history of the past. 
The older domestic architecture of the English may be 
viewed in another pleasing light. Their buildings and 
residences have not only the recommendation of beauty 
and complete adaptation, but the additional charm of 
having been the homes of our ancestors, and the dwellings 
of that bright galaxy of English genius and worth, which 
illuminates equally the intellectual firmament of both 
hemispheres. He who has extended his researches, con 
