onstructors whatsoever.

One other erroneous idea requires to be upset; the notion that our
modern houses, merely because they are recent, are better built and more
convenient than ancient ones. If there be one thing more certain than
another in the matter, it is this, that a gentleman's house built in
1700, is far handsomer, stronger, and more convenient, than one built in
1800; and not only so, but if it had had fair play given it, would still
outlive the newer one, and give it fifty years to boot;--and also that
another house built in 1600, is stronger than the one raised in 1700,
and has still an equal chance of survivorship; but that any veteran
mansion which once witnessed the year 1500, is worth all the other three
put together--not only for design and durability, but also for comfort
and real elegance. Pick out a bit of walling or roofing some four or
five centuries old, and it would take a modern erection of five times
the same solidity to stand the same test of ages.

Let it not be supposed that our ancestors dwelt in rooms smaller, or
darker, or smokier, than those we now cram ourselves into. Nothing at
all of the kind; they knew what ease was, better than we do. They had
glorious bay-windows, and warm chimney-corners, and well-hung buttery
hatches, and good solid old oak tables, and ponderous chairs: had their
windows and doors been only a little more air-tight, their comforts
could not have been increased.

First of all, then, with regard to the plans best suited for the country
residences of the nobility and gentry of England--of that high-minded
and highly gifted aristocracy, which is the peculiar ornament of this
island,--of that solid honest squirearchy, which shall be the
sheet-anchor of the nation, after all our commercial gents, with their
ephemeral prosperity, shall have disappeared from the surface of the
land, and have been forgotten,--the plan of a house best suited for the
"Fine old English Gentleman;" and we really do not care to waste our
time in considering the convenience and the taste of any that do not
rank with this class of men. It is absurd for any of the worthy members
of that truly noble and generous class of men, to try to erect
reminiscences of Italy, or any other southern clime, amid their own
"tall ancestral groves" at home, here in old England. They have every
right in the world to inhabit the palaces of Italy, which many a needy
owner is glad to find them tenanting; they canno