Rural Architecture | Page 7

institutions, our habits, our agriculture, our climates.
Utility is our chief object, and coupled with that, the indulgence of an
agreeable taste may be permitted to every one who creates a home for
himself, or founds one for his family. The frequent changes of estates
incident to our laws, and the many inducements held out to our people
to change their locality or residence, in the hope of bettering their
condition, is a strong hindrance to the adoption of a universally correct
system in the construction of our buildings; deadening, as the effect of
such changes, that home feeling which should be a prominent trait of
agricultural character. An attachment to locality is not a conspicuous
trait of American character; and if there be a people on earth boasting a
high civilization and intelligence, who are at the same time a roving
race, the Americans are that people; and we acknowledge it a blemish
in our domestic and social constitution.
Such remark is not dropped invidiously, but as a reason why we have
thus far made so little progress in the arts of home embellishment, and
in clustering about our habitations those innumerable attractions which
win us to them sufficiently to repel the temptation so often presented to
our enterprise, our ambition, or love of gain--and these not always
successful--in seeking other and distant places of abode. If, then, this
tendency to change--a want of attachment to any one spot--is a reason
why we have been so indifferent to domestic architecture; and if the
study and practice of a better system of building tends to cultivate a
home feeling, why should it not be encouraged? Home attachment is a
virtue. Therefore let that virtue be cherished. And if any one study tend

to exalt our taste, and promote our enjoyment, let us cultivate that study
to the highest extent within our reach.

STYLE OF BUILDING.--MISCELLANEOUS.
Diversified as are the features of our country in climate, soil, surface,
and position, no one style of rural architecture is properly adapted to
the whole; and it is a gratifying incident to the indulgence in a variety
of taste, that we possess the opportunity which we desire in its display
to almost any extent in mode and effect. The Swiss chalêt may hang in
the mountain pass; the pointed Gothic may shoot up among the
evergreens of the rugged hill-side; the Italian roof, with its overlooking
campanile, may command the wooded slope or the open plain; or the
quaint and shadowy style of the old English mansion, embosomed in its
vines and shrubbery, may nestle in the quiet, shaded valley, all suited to
their respective positions, and each in harmony with the natural features
by which it is surrounded. Nor does the effect which such structures
give to the landscape in an ornamental point of view, require that they
be more imposing in character than the necessities of the occasion may
demand. True economy demands a structure sufficiently spacious to
accommodate its occupants in the best manner, so far as convenience
and comfort are concerned in a dwelling; and its conformity to just
rules in architecture need not be additionally expensive or troublesome.
He who builds at all, if it be anything beyond a rude or temporary
shelter, may as easily and cheaply build in accordance with correct
rules of architecture, as against such rules; and it no more requires an
extravagance in cost or a wasteful occupation of room to produce a
given effect in a house suited to humble means, than in one of profuse
accommodation. Magnificence, or the attempt at magnificence in
building, is the great fault with Americans who aim to build out of the
common line; and the consequence of such attempt is too often a failure,
apparent, always, at a glance, and of course a perfect condemnation in
itself of the judgment as well as taste of him who undertakes it.
Holding our tenures as we do, with no privilege of entail to our
posterity, an eye to his own interest, or to that of his family who is to

succeed to his estate, should admonish the builder of a house to the
adoption of a plan which will, in case of the sale of the estate, involve
no serious loss. He should build such a house as will be no detriment,
in its expense, to the selling value of the land on which it stands, and
always fitted for the spot it occupies. Hence, an imitation of the high,
extended, castellated mansions of England, or the Continent, although
in miniature, are altogether unsuited to the American farmer or planter,
whose lands, instead of increasing in his family, are continually subject
to division, or to sale in mass, on his own demise; and when the estate
is encumbered with