life blood of the country, would
soon dwindle into insignificance and decrepitude. Why then should not
this first, primitive, health-enjoying and life-sustaining class of our
people be equally accommodated in all that gives to social and
substantial life, its due development? It is absurd to deny them by
others, or that they deny themselves, the least of such advantages, or
that any mark of _caste_ be attempted to separate them from any other
class or profession of equal wealth, means, or necessity. It is quite as
well to say that the farmer should worship on the Sabbath in a
_meeting-house_, built after the fashion of his barn, or that his
district school house should look like a stable, as that his dwelling
should not exhibit all that cheerfulness and respectability in form and
feature which belongs to the houses of any class of our population
whatever. Not that the farm house should be like the town or the village
house, in character, style, or architecture, but that it should, in its
own proper character, express all the comfort, repose, and quietude
which belong to the retired and thoughtful occupation of him who
inhabits it. Sheltered in its own secluded, yet independent domain, with
a cheerful, _intelligent_ exterior, it should exhibit all the
pains-taking in home embellishment and rural decoration that becomes its
position, and which would make it an object of attraction and regard.

* * * * *

RURAL ARCHITECTURE.

* * * * *

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS.

In ascertaining what is desirable to the conveniences, or the
necessities in our household arrangement, it may be not unprofitable to
look about us, and consider somewhat, the existing condition of the
structures too many of us now inhabit, and which, in the light of true
fitness for the objects designed, are inconvenient, absurd, and out of
all harmony of purpose; yet, under the guidance of a better skill, and a
moderate outlay, might be well adapted, in most cases, to our
convenience and comfort, and quite well, to a reasonable standard of
taste in architectural appearance.

At the threshold--not of the house, but of this treatise--it may be well
to remark that it is not here assumed that there has been neither skill,
ingenuity, nor occasional good taste exhibited, for many generations
back, in the United States, in the construction of farm and country
houses. On the contrary, th