ciation, they select some Italian villa, Elizabethan house, or Swiss cottage, as their model. Ten chances to one the Italian villa, designed for the border of a lake, will be placed near a dusty high road; the Elizabethan house, instead of being surrounded by venerable trees, will raise its high gables on the top of a bare hill; and the Swiss cottage, instead of hanging upon the mountain-side, will be placed upon a level plain, surrounded with a flower-garden, divided into all manner of fantastic parterres, with box edgings.
Our country, containing as it does, in its wide extent, hills and mountains, sheltered dells and far-spreading valleys, lake-sides and river-sides, affords every possible situation for picturesque villas; and great care should be taken that appropriate sites be chosen for appropriate and comfortable buildings; comfortable, we say, for after the novelty of the exterior has pleased the eye of the owner for a few weeks, if his house wants that half-homely, but wholly indispensable attribute, comfort, he had better leave it to ornament his grounds, like an artificial ruin, and build himself another to live in. Cottages are at present quite “the rage” in many parts of the United States. Some outré enormities are styled Swiss cottages.
The larger and better kind of Swiss cottages are built with roofs projecting from five to seven feet over the sides; these projections are strengthened by strong wooden supports, that the heavy snow which falls upon the roofs need not crush them. Utility and beauty are thus combined; but there is no beauty in such a cottage in a sunny vale, where the snow falls seldom or lightly. On the Green Mountains, or among the White Hills, it might stand as gracefully as it does among its native Alps. Walnut and chestnut trees are always beautiful accompaniments to the Swiss cottage. The same care should be taken to render the cottage comfortable, as the villa; and in this point, unfortunately, there is often a complete failure. There is no absolute need that this should be the case. A cottage or a farm-house may be picturesque without sacrificing one tittle of its convenience. The great and leading object should be utility, and where that is absolutely sacrificed in architecture, whatever may be substituted in its place, it cannot be considered beautiful.
