.--_First Floor._]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--_Second Floor._]

It has been frequently observed that the gate lodges and farm cottages
attached to large estates are generally more attractive in their
architectural proportions and beauty than the mansion itself; and this
has been usually attributed to the education of the proprietor's tastes,
the cottages being the latest erections. This impression is not,
however, always true; for there is a peculiar beauty and attractiveness
about cottage architecture which can not be produced in buildings of a
larger and more commodious class. Certain it is that a prettily designed
cottage will always arrest attention. "Among the first and most
pleasing impressions," says a late writer, "of our trite friend, the
intelligent foreigner, as he entered England by the old Dover road, were
those suggested by the little whitewashed and woodbined cottages which
caught his eye at every turn. All books of travels on English ground are
full of them. Snugly sheltered in its bower of apple trees, or more
stately group of walnuts, approachable only by its rustic stairs, or
dotted at neighborly distances along the straggling village, with its
trim garden of lavender and wall flowers, seen through the wicket gate
or over the privet hedge, the English cottage, above or below, near or
in the distance, was alike the delight and envy of the traveler, the
theme of the journalist and the poet. 'There is scarce a cottage,' says
an American tourist just landed from America and France, 'between Dover
and London which a poet might not be happy to live in. I saw a hundred
little spots I coveted with quite a heart-ache.' Whether or not Rogers
would have given up his picture-lighted snuggery in St. James' Place for
his 'Cot beside the hill,' and really preferred to have his latch lifted
by the pilgrim, instead of his knocker by a London footman, it is
certain that the cottage homes of England that border the main roads
have long possessed a beauty far beyond the houses in other lands
belonging to classes much higher in the social scale, and have been
coveted, sometimes not without reason, by those who could, if they
chose, have purchased them fifty times over."

DESIGN No. 8.

This design for a timber cottage is simple and at the same time
picturesque, and built upon a site adapted to it, and in harmony with
the architectural expression, the effect could not fail to be in a high
degree pleasing.

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