d over the low hatch. A few square feet of garden and a
latched wicket, persuading the weary and dusty pedestrian, with
expressive eloquence, 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
London to be unspoiled by town sophistications, is a very perfect thing
in its way.[1] 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.

[Footnote 1: Compare _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, I. Sec. 16.]

13. Let us now cross the Channel, and endeavor to find a country cottage
on the other side, if we can; for it is a difficult matter. There are
many villages; but such a thing as an isolated cottage is extremely
rare. Let us try one or two of the green valleys among the chalk
eminences which sweep from Abbeville to Rouen. Here is a cottage at
last, and a picturesque one, which is more than we could say for the
English domicile. What then is the difference? There is a general air of
_nonchalance_ about the French peasant's habitation, which is aided by a
perfect want of everything like neatness; and rendered more conspicuous
by some points about the building which have a look of neglected beauty,
and obliterated ornament. Half of the whitewash is worn off, and the
other half colored by various mosses and wandering lichens, which have
been permitted to vegetate upon it, and which, though beautiful,
constitute a kind of beauty from which the ideas of age and decay are
inseparable. The tall roof of the garret window stands fantastically
out; and underneath it, where, in England, we had a plain double
lattice, is a deep recess, flatly arched at the top, built of solid
masses of gray stone, fluted on the edge; while the brightness of the
glass within (if there be any) is lost in shade, causing the recess to
appear to the observer like a dark eye. The door has the same character:
it is also of stone, which is so much broken and disguised as to prevent
it from giving any idea of strength or stability. The entrance is always
open; no roses, or anything else, are wreathed about it; several
outhouses, built in the same style, give the building extent; and the
group (in all probability, the dependency of some large old chateau in
the distance) does not peep out of copse, or thicket, or a group of tall