Nothing can be more unsightly than the stalky, staring houses of our villages, with their plain gable-roofs, of a pitch neither high enough nor low enough for beauty, and disfigured, moreover, by mere excrescences of attic windows, and over the whole structure the awkward angularity, and the look of barren, mindless conformity and uniformity in the general outlines, and the meagre, frittered effect inherent in the material. But when we come to build, we find that the blockheads who invented this style, or no-style, have got at the cheapest way of supplying the first imperative demands of the people for whom they build,--namely, to be walled in and roofed weather-tight, and with a decent neatness, but without much care that the house should be solid and enduring,--for it cannot well be so flimsy as not to outlast the owner's needs. He does not look to it as the habitation of his children,--hardly as his own for his lifetime,--but as a present shelter, easily and quickly got ready, and as easily plucked up and carried off again. The common-law of England looks upon a house as real estate, as part of the soil; but with us it is hardly a fixture. Surely nothing can be more simple and common-sense than an ordinary New England house, but at the same time nothing can be uglier. The outline, the material, the color and texture of the surface are at all points opposed to breadth of effect or harmony with the surroundings. There is neither mass nor elegance; there are no lines of union with the ground; the meagre monotony of the lines of shingles and clapboards making subdivisions too small to be impressive, and too large to be overlooked,--and finally, the paint, of which the outside really consists, thrusting forward its chalky blankness, as it were a standing defiance of all possibility of assimilation,--all combine to form something that shall forever remain a blot in the landscape. Evidently it is not merely a more common-sense treatment that we want; for here is sufficient simplicity, but a simplicity barren of all satisfaction. And singularly enough, it seems, with all its meagreness, to pass easily into an ostentatious display. In these houses there is no thought of "architecture"; that is considered as something quite apart, and not essential to the well-building of the house. But for this very reason matters are not much changed when the owner determines to spend something for looks. The house remains at bottom the same rude mass, with the "architecture" tacked on. It is not that the owner has any deeper or different sentiment towards his dwelling, but merely that he has a desire to make a flourish before the eyes of beholders. There is no heartfelt interest in all this on his part; it gives him no pleasure; how, then, should it please the spectator?