5

of form or expression, it is noble and praiseworthy. A villa in the style of a Persian palace, with its Oriental domes and minarets, equally unmeaning and unsuited to our life or climate, is an example of the former; as an English cottage, with its beautiful home expression, and its thorough comfort and utility, evinced in steep roofs to shed the snow, and varied form to accommodate modern habits, is of the latter.

9. Domestic architecture should be less severe less rigidly scientific-than in public buildings; and it should exhibit more of the freedom and play of feeling of every-day life. A man may, in public halls, recite a poem in blank verse, or deliver a studied oration with the utmost propriety; but he would be justly the object of ridicule if at the fireside he talked about the weather, his family, or his friend in the same strain.

10. What familiar conversation, however tasteful and wellbred, is to public declâmation, domestic is to civil or ecclesiastical architecture; and we have no more patience with those architects who give us copies of the Temple of Theseus, with its high, severe colonnades, for dwellings, than with a friend who should describe his wife and children to us in the lofty rhythm of Ossian. For this reason the Italian, Venetian, Swiss, rural Gothic, and our bracketed style, which are all modified and subdued forms of the Gothic and Greek styles, are the variations of those types most suitable for domestic architect

LESSON VIII.—THE POETRY OF COTTAGE ARCHITECTURE.

1

Adapted from LOUDON'S Magazine.

THE cottage homes of England!

By thousands on her plains,

They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet fanes.

Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves,

And fearless there the lowly sleep,

As the bird beneath their eaves.-HEMANS.

2. Of all embellishments by which the efforts of man can enhance the beauty of natural scenery, those are the most effective which can give animation to the scene, while the spirit which they bestow is in unison with its general character. It is generally desirable to indicate the presence of ani

mated existence in a scene of natural beauty, but only of such existence as shall be imbued with the spirit, and partake of the essence of the beauty, which without it would be dead. If our object, therefore, is to embellish a scene, the character of which is peaceful and unpretending, we must not erect a building which shall be expressive of the abode of wealth or pride.

3. However beautiful or imposing in itself, such an object immediately indicates the presence of a kind of existence unsuited to the scenery which it inhabits, and of a mind which, when it sought retirement, was unacquainted with its own ruling feelings, and which consequently excites no sympathy in ours; but if we erect a dwelling which may appear adapted to the wants, and sufficient for the comfort of a gentle heart and lowly mind, we have attained our object; we have bestowed animation, and we have not disturbed repose.

4. It is for this reason that the cottage is one of the embellishments of natural scenery which deserves attentive consideration. It is beautiful always and every where; and whether looking out of the woody dingle with its eyelike window, and sending up the motion of azure smoke between the silver trunks of aged trees, or grouped among the bright corn-fields of the fruitful plain, or forming gray clusters along the slope of the mountain side, the cottage always gives the idea of a thing to be beloved-a quiet, life-giving voice, that is as peaceful as silence itself.

5. The principal thing worthy of observation in a finished cottage is its all-pervading neatness, and the expression of tranquil repose. The swallow or the martin is permitted to attach his humble domicile, in undisturbed security, to the eaves; but he may be considered as enhancing the effect of

the cottage by increasing its usefulness, and making it contribute to the comfort of more beings than one. The whitewash is stainless, and its rough surface catches a side light as brightly as a front one; the luxuriant rose is trained gracefully over the window; and the gleaming lattice, divided, not into heavy squares, but into small-pointed diamonds, is thrown half open, as is just discovered among the green leaves of the sweet brier, to admit the breeze, that, as it passes over the flowers, becomes full of their fragrance.

6. The bright wooden porch breaks the flat of the cottage. face by its projection, and branches of the wandering honeysuckle spread over its low hatch. A few square feet of garden, and a latched wicket, inviting the weary and dusty pedestrian to lean upon it for an instant, and request a drink of water or milk, complete a picture which, if it be far enough from the city to be unspoiled by town sophistications, is a very perfect thing in its way. The ideas it awakens are agreeable, and the architecture is all that we want in such a situation. It is pretty and appropriate; and, if it boasted of any other perfection, it would be at the expense of its propriety.

1.

LESSON IX. THE SHEPHERD'S COTTAGE.

WHERE Woods of ash, and beech,

And partial copses fringe the green hill foot,

The upland shepherd rears his modest home;
There wanders by a little nameless stream

That from the hill wells forth, bright now and clear,
Or after rain with chalky mixture gray,

But still refreshing in its shallow course
The cottage garden-most for use designed,
Yet not of beauty destitute. The vine
Mantles the little casement; yet the brier

Drops fragrant dew among the July flowers;

And pansies ray'd, and freak'd' and mottled pinks,
Grow among balm, and rosemary,

and rue;

There honeysuckles flaunt, and roses blow

Almost uncultured: some with dark green leaves
Contrast their flowers of pure unsullied white;
Others like velvet robes of regal state

Of richest crimson; while, in thorny moss
Enshrined and cradled, the most lovely wear
The hues of youthful beauty's glowing cheek.
2. With fond regret I recollect, e'en now,
In spring and summer what delight I felt
Among these cottage gardens, and how much
Such artless nosegays, knotted with a rush
By village housewife or her ruddy maid,

Were welcome to me; soon and simply pleased,
An early worshiper at Nature's shrine,

2

I loved her rudest scenes-warrens, and heaths,
And yellow commons, and birch-shaded hollows,
And hedgerows, bordering unfrequented lanes
Bower'd with wild roses, and the clasping woodbine,
Where purple tassels of the tangling vetch
With bittersweet and bryony inweave,

And the dew fills the silver bindweed's cups:

3. I loved to trace the brooks whose humid banks
Nourish the harebell, and the freckled pagil;
And stroll among o'ershadowing woods of beech,
Sending in summer from the heats of noon
A whispering shade; while haply there reclines
Some pensive lover of uncultur'd flowers,

Who from the tumps,3 with bright green mosses clad,
Plucks the wood sorrel with its light thin leaves,

Heart-shaped, and triply-folded, and its root

4

Creeping like beaded coral; or who there
Gathers, the copse's pride, anemones,"
With rays like golden studs on ivory laid
Most delicate; but touch'd with purple clouds,
Fit crown for April's fair but changeful brow.

CHARLOTTE SMITH.

1 FREAK'ED, variegated. [for rabbits, etc. 3 TUMP, a little hillock. 2 WAR'-BEN (wor'-ren), an inclosed place

LES. X.—OF TRUTHFULNESS IN ARCHITECTURE.

A. J. DOWNING.

Mx picturesque elevated country house. at Newport-Ro.,

1. Ir all persons building in the country knew how much the pleasure we derive from rural architecture is enhanced by truthfulness, we should be spared the pain of seeing so many miserable failures in country houses of small dimensions. A cottage by which we mean a house of small size-will never succeed in an attempt to impose itself upon us as a villa. Nay, by any such attempt on the part of the builder, the cottage will lose its own peculiar charm, which is as great, in its way, as that of the villa.1

2. This throwing away the peculiar beauty and simplicity of a cottage, in endeavoring to imitate the richness and variety of a villa, is as false in taste as for a person of simple character to lay aside his simplicity and frankness, to assume the cultivation and polish of a man of the world. The basis for enduring beauty is truthfulness, no less in houses than in morals; and cottages, farm-houses, and villas, which aim to be only the best and most agreeable cottages, farm-houses, and villas, will be infinitely more acceptable to the senses, feelings, and understanding than those which endeavor to assume a grandeur foreign to their nature and purpose.

3. The principle which the reason would lay down for the government of the architect in constructing buildings for domestic as well as public life, is the simple and obvious one, that both in material and character they should appear to be