"The prospect from this seat is extensive and grand, taking in a horizon to the east, of seventy miles, at least. The blue hills in Milton are discernible with the naked eye, from the windows of this superb edifice, distant not less than sixty miles; as also the waters in the harbor of Boston, at certain seasons of the year. When we view this seat, these buildings, and this farm of so many hundred acres, now under a high degree of profitable cultivation, and are told that in the year 1766 it was a perfect wilderness, we are struck with wonder, admiration, and astonishment. The honorable proprietor thereof must have great satisfaction in contemplating these improvements, so extensive, made under his direction, and, I may add, by his own active industry. Judge Gill is a gentleman of singular vivacity and activity, and indefatigable in his endeavors to bring forward the cultivation of his lands; of great and essential service, by his example, in the employment he finds for so many persons, and in all his attempts to serve the interests of the place where he dwells, and in his acts of private munificence, and public generosity, and deserves great respect and esteem, not only from individuals, but from the town and country he has so greatly benefited, and especially by the ways in which he makes use of that vast estate wherewith a kind Providence has blessed him." Such was the estate, and such the man who founded and enjoyed it sixty years ago; and many an equal estate, founded and occupied by equally valuable men, then existed, and still exist in all our older states; and if our private and public virtues are preserved, will ever exist in every state of our union. Such pictures, too, are forcible illustrations of the _morals_ of correct building on the ample estates of many of our American planters and farmers. The mansion house, which is so graphically described, we saw but a short time before it was pulled down--then old, and hardly worth repairing, being built of wood, and of style something like this design of our own, bating the extent of veranda. The cost of this house may be from $5000 to $8000, depending upon the material of which it is constructed, the degree of finish given to it, and the locality where it is built. All these circumstances are to be considered, and the estimates should be made by practical and experienced builders, who are competent judges in whatever appertains to it. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 173-174.] DESIGN VII. A PLANTATION HOUSE.--Another southern house is here presented, quite different in architectural design from the last, plain, unpretending, less ornate in its finish, as well as less expensive in construction. It may occupy a different site, in a hilly, wooded country of rougher surface, but equally becoming it, as the other would more fitly grace the level prairie, or spreading plain in the more showy luxury of its character.