The Architecture of Country Houses: Including Designs for Cottages, Farm Houses, and Villas, with Remarks on Interiors, Furniture, and the Best Modes of Warming and Ventilating

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D. Appleton & Company, 1852 - 484 pages
 

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Page v - So long as men are forced to dwell in log huts and follow a hunter's life, we must not be surprised at lynch law and the use of the Bowie knife. But when smiling lawns and tasteful cottages begin to embellish a country, we know that order and culture are established.
Page 201 - Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, " if you would fix upon the best colour for your house, turn up a stone, or pluck up a handful of grass by the roots, and see what is the colour of the soil where the house is to stand, and let that be your choice.
Page 22 - Love), every thing falls under the horizontal line — the level line of rationality; it is all logical, orderly, syllogistically perfect, as the wisdom of the schools. In domestic architecture, though the range of expression may at first seem limited, it is not so in fact, for when complete, it ought to be significant of the whole private life of man — his intelligence, his feelings, and his enjoyments.
Page vi - The mere sentiment of home, with its thousand associations, has, like a strong anchor, saved many a man from shipwreck in the storms of life.
Page 35 - When we employ stone as a building material, let it be clearly expressed; when we employ wood, there should be no less frankness in avowing the material. There is more merit in so using wood as to give to it the utmost expression of which the substance is capable, than in endeavoring to make it look like some other...
Page v - It is the solitude and freedom of the family home in the country which constantly preserves the purity of the nation, and invigorates its intellectual powers. The battle of life, carried on in cities, gives a sharper edge to the weapon of character, but its temper is, for the most part, fixed amid those communings with nature and the family, where individuality takes its most natural and strongest development.
Page 263 - To find a really original man living in an original and characteristic house, is as satisfactory as to find an eagle's nest built on the top of a mountain crag— while to find a pretentious, shallow man in such a habitation, is no better than to find the jackdaw in the eagle's nest.
Page 205 - Many people seem to have a sort of callus over their organs of sight, as others over those of hearing ; and as the callous hearers feel nothing in music but kettle-drums and trombones, so the callous seers can only be moved by strong oppositions of black and white, or by fiery reds. I am therefore so far from laughing at Mr. Locke's blind man for likening scarlet to the sound of a trumpet, that I think he had great reason to pride himself on the discovery.
Page vi - And much of that feverish unrest and want of balance between the desire and the fulfilment of life, is calmed and adjusted by the pursuit of tastes which result in making a little world of the family home, where truthfulness, beauty, and order have the largest dominion.
Page v - The second reason is, because the individual home has a great social value for a people. Whatever new systems may be needed for the regeneration of an old and enfeebled nation, we are persuaded that, in America, not only is the distinct family the best social form, but those elementary forces which give rise to the highest genius and the finest character may, for the most part, be traced back to the farm-house and the rural cottage. It is the solitude and freedom of the family home in the country...

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