The great difficulty with many Americans in getting up a new place of any considerable extent is, that they seem to think whatever is common, or natural in the features of the spot must be so changed as to show, above all others, their own ingenuity and love of expense in fashioning it to their peculiar tastes. Rocks must be sunk, or blasted, trees felled, and bushes grubbed, crooked water-courses straightened--the place gibbeted and put into stocks; in fact, that their own boasted handiwork may rise superior to the wisdom of Him who fashioned it in his own good pleasure; forgetting that a thousand points of natural beauty upon the earth on which they breathe are "When unadorned, adorned the most;" and our eye has been frequently shocked at finding the choicest gems of nature sacrificed to a wanton display of expense in perverting, to the indulgence of a mistaken fancy, that, which, with an eye to truth and propriety, and at a trifling expense, might have become a spot of abiding interest and contentment. DESIGN VI. A SOUTHERN OR PLANTATION HOUSE.--The proprietor of a plantation in the South, or South-west, requires altogether a different kind of residence from the farmer of the Northern, or Middle States. He resides in the midst of his own principality, surrounded by a retinue of dependents and laborers, who dwell distant and apart from his own immediate family, although composing a community requiring his daily care and superintendence for a great share of his time. A portion of them are the attaches of his household, yet so disconnected in their domestic relations, as to require a separate accommodation, and yet be in immediate contiguity with it, and of course, an arrangement of living widely different from those who mingle in the same circle, and partake at the same board. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 155-156.] The usual plan of house-building at the South, we are aware, is to have _detached_ servants' rooms, and offices, and a space of some yards of uncovered way intervene between the family rooms of the chief dwelling and its immediate dependents. Such arrangement, however, we consider both unnecessary and inconvenient; and we have devised a plan of household accommodation which will bring the family of the planter himself, and their servants, although under different roofs, into convenient proximity with each other. A design of this kind is here given.