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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
It has been said that the English people are more civilized than 1 thc people of other countries . The poor Southern Americans lhave been called barbarians when compared with them , yet there iis one particular in which the English resemble the wilder aniimals , and the Southern Americans are distinguished from them .
The wild animals abandon their young when they arrive at maturity . So do the English people ; the distinctive mark of maturity being the entering into the marriage-contract . So soon as the son or daughter of an English family may be married , they seek a separate dwelling , or rather are driven forth to seek it . But the sons and daughters of the Southern Americans usually remain
beneath the paternal roof till the increase of family renders the mansion too small for the occupants . Possibly , some reason for this may be found in the different style of the dwellings , yet still the cause of that difference must have been originally in the unsocial qualities of the people . A Southern American mansion is usually a hollow quadrangle with rooms all round it .
There is one huge drawing-room , or sitting-room , called the sola , n here the whole family and numerous visitors are accustomed to assemble in the evenings . Another large room is called the comedor , wherein all take their meals . All the rest of the apartments are bed-chambers , used also as sitting-rooms during the day by the various members of the family , married or unmarried . There
is something pleasingly social in ail this , though it is but the rude term of what social living should be , and there is infinite room for improvement . We must try to amend the evil in our sea-girt island , which has set so many examples to the rest of the world in all physical excellences which give to mind the dominion over
matter , yet without using that dominion in the modes best calculated to promote human happiness . In English towns , as well as many others , the houses are built 11 streets side by side , as uniformly as soldiers' barracks , for the most part , although they are each sedulously provided with a separate entrance ; behind each of these houses there is usually a
vacant space , called a yard or garden , of about the same superficial extent as what the house stands on . The houses are divided ironi each other by party-walls , and the yards are divided from Mich other by low partition-walls , so contrived , that though the inhabitants on the ground-floor cannot see over them , yet , from * he first floor , each occupant may look up and down the whole
range of yards or gardens , inspecting all his neighbours concerns , and this is facetiously called privacy . In the outskirts of London , it is a custom to build detached houses , with a garden before and tahind , a sort of arrangement whereby the supervision of each occupant over his neighbour ' concerns is considerably enlarged . It would seem , therefore , that it has never yet entered into the imagination of any builder , that it would be possible so to arrange a of houses that none of the inhabitants could have the pri-
Untitled Article
Housebuilding and Housekeeping . 573
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 573, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/43/
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