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.To the eye, they presented a variety of colours.A few were white in both front and rear, but more bore that expensive color on their fronts only, while their economical but ambitious owners had covered the remaining sides of the edifices, with a dingy red.One or two were slowly assuming the russet of age; while the uncovered beams that were to be seen through the broken windows of their second stories, showed, that either the taste, or the vanity of their proprietors, had led them to undertake a task, which they were unable to accomplish.The whole were grouped in a manner that aped the streets of a city, and were evidently so arranged, by the directions of one, who looked to the wants of posterity, rather than to the convenience of the present incumbents.Some three or four of the better sort of buildings, in addition to the uniformity of their colour, were fitted with green blinds, which, at that season at least, were rather strangely contrasted to the chill aspect of the lake, the mountains, the forests, and the wide fields of snow.Before the doors of these pretending dwellings, were placed a few saplings either without branches, or possessing only the feeble shoots of one or two summers' growth, that looked not unlike tall grenadiers on post, near the threshold of princes.In truth, the occupants of these favoured habitations were the nobles of Templeton, as Marmaduke was its king.They were the dwellings of two young men who were cunning in the law; an equal number of that class who chaffered to the wants of the community, under the title of store-keepers; and a disciple of Æsculapius, who, for a novelty, brought more subjects into the world than he sent out of it.In the midst of this incongruous group of dwellings, rose the mansion of the Judge, towering above all its neighbours.It stood in the centre of an enclosure of several acres, which were covered with fruit-trees.Some of the latter had been left by the Indians, and began already to assume the moss and inclination of age, therein forming a very marked contrast to the infant plantations that peer'd over most of the picketed fences of the village.In addition to this show of cultivation, were two rows of young Lombardy poplars, a tree but lately introduced into America, formally lining either side of a path-way, which led from a gate, that opened on the principal street, to the front door of the building.The house itself had been built entirely under the superintendence of a certain Mr.Richard Jones, whom we have already mentioned, and who, from his cleverness in small matters, and an entire willingness to exert his talents, added to the circumstance of their being sisters' children, ordinarily superintended all the minor concerns of Marmaduke Temple.Richard was fond of saying, that this child of his invention, consisted of nothing more nor less, than what should form the ground work of every clergyman's discourse; viz.a firstly, and a lastly.He had commenced his labours in the first year of their residence, by erecting a tall, gaunt edifice of wood, with its gable towards the highway.In this shelter, for it was little more, the family resided three years.By the end of that period, Richard had completed his design.He had availed himself, in this heavy undertaking, of the experience of a certain wandering, eastern mechanic, who, by exhibiting a few soiled plates of English architecture, and talking learnedly of friezes, entablatures, and particularly of the composite order, had obtained a very undue influence over Richard's taste, in every thing that pertained to that branch of the fine arts.Not that Mr.Jones did not affect to consider Hiram Doolittle a perfect empyric in his profession; being in the constant habit of listening to his treatises on architecture, with a kind of indulgent smile, yet, either from an inability to oppose them by any thing plausible from his own stores of learning, or from secret admiration, Richard generally submitted to the arguments of his co-adjutor.Together, they had not only erected a dwelling for Marmaduke, but they had given a fashion to the architecture of the whole county.The composite order, Mr [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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