, if uncultivated or neglected, any amount of
expenditure in building will fail to give that completeness and
perfection of character which every homestead should command. Thus the
tawdry erections in imitation of a cast-off feudalism in Europe, or a
copying of the massive piles of more recent date abroad, although in
miniature, both in extent and cost, is the sheerest affectation, in
which no sensible man should ever indulge. It is out of all keeping, or
propriety with other things, as we in this country have them, and the
indulgence of all such fancies is sooner or later regretted. Substance,
convenience, purpose, harmony--all, perhaps, better summed up in the
term EXPRESSION--these are the objects which should govern the
construction of our dwellings and out-buildings, and in their observance
we can hardly err in the acquisition of what will promote the highest
enjoyment which a dwelling can bestow.

POSITION.

The site of a dwelling should be an important study with every country
builder; for on this depends much of its utility, and in addition to
that, a large share of the enjoyment which its occupation will afford.
Custom, in many parts of the United States, in the location of the farm
buildings, gives advantages which are denied in others. In the south,
and in the slave states generally, the planter builds, regardless of
roads, on the most convenient site his plantation presents; the farmer
of German descent, in Pennsylvania and some other states, does the same:
while the Yankee, be he settled where he will, either in the east,
north, or west, inexorably huddles himself immediately upon the highway,
whether his possessions embrace both sides of it or not, disregarding
the facilities of access to his fields, the convenience of tilling his
crops, or the character of the ground which his buildings may occupy,
seeming to have no other object than proximity to the road--as if his
chief business was upon that, instead of its being simply a convenience
to his occupation. To the last, but little choice is left; and so long
as a close connection with the thoroughfare is to control, he is obliged
to conform to accident in what should be a matter of deliberate choice
and judgment. Still, there are right and wrong positions for a house,
which it is necessary to discuss, regardless of conventional rules, and
they should be considered in the light of propriety alone.

A fitness to the purposes for which the dwelling