To an inhabitant of one of the large towns on the coast of America, a country house is not merely desirable as a place of retirement from noise and bustle, where the owner may indulge his fancy in the contemplation of rural scenes, at a season when nature is attired in her most pleasing garb, but also as a safe retreat from the dreadful maladies which of late years have never failed to rage with more or less virulence in these places during certain months. When at Philadelphia the yellow fever committed such dreadful havoc, sparing neither the rich nor the poor, the young nor the aged, who had the confidence to remain in the city, or were unable to quit it, scarcely a single instance occurred of any one of those falling a victim to its baneful influence, who lived but one mile removed from town, where was a free circulation of air, and who at the same time studiously avoided all communication with the sick, or with those who had visited them; every person therefore at Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, &c. who is sufficiently wealthy to afford it, has his country habitation in the neighbourhood of these respective places, to which he may retire in the hot unhealthy season of the year; but this delightful part of Long Island, of which I have been speaking, though it affords such a number of charming situations for little villas, is unfortunately too far removed from New York to be a convenient place of retreat to men so deeply engaged in commercial pursuits as are the greater number of the inhabitants of that city, and it remains almost destitute of houses; whilst another part of the island, more conveniently situated, is crowded with them, although the face of the country is here flat and sandy, devoid of trees, and wholly uninteresting. [Sidenote: LONG ISLAND.]