The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the
painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and
cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants
whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces
merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will
be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and
as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining
after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of
architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale
would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the
substantials. They can do without architecture who have no olives
nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the
ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles
spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our
churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and
their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few
sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed
upon his box.
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