This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
382
RURAL HOURS.

such tenants; where the inmates are idle and shiftless, they are wretched holes, full of disorder and filth.

Next to the log-cabin, in our architectural history, comes its very opposite, the lank and lean style, the shallow order, which aimed at rising far above the lowly log-cottage; proud of a tall front and two stories, proud of twice too many windows, but quite indifferent to all rules and proportions, to all appearance of comfort and snugness; houses of this kind look as if the winter wind must blow quite through them. The roof presses directly upon the upper tier of windows, and looks as though it had been stretched to meet the walls, scarcely projecting enough, one would think, for safety, eaves being thought a useless luxury; the window-frames are as scant as possible, and set on the very surface of the building, and there is neither porch nor piazza at the door. Such is the shallow in its simplest form, but it is often seen in a very elaborate state—and to speak frankly, when this is the case, what was before ungainly and comfortless in aspect, becomes glaringly ridiculous. In instances of this kind, we find the shallow-ornate assuming the Grecian portico, running up sometimes one wing, sometimes two; pipe-stem columns one-fiftieth of their height in diameter, and larger, perhaps, in the centre than at either extremity, stand trembling beneath a pediment which, possibly, contains a good-sized bed-room, with a window in the apex. Such buildings are frequently surrounded with a very fanciful paling of one sort or other. One looks into the barn-yard of such a house with anxious misgivings, lest the geese should be found all neck, the cocks all tail, the pigs with longer noses, the ponies with longer ears than are usually thought becoming.

Succeeding to the common shallow, and coeval with the shal-