AMERICAN SEATS.
The Fine Arts are, as to the American Nation at large, in their infancy; to promote them in propagating Taste with the habit of rural retirement, supported by the growing wealth of the Nation, will be to form the National character favourable to the civilization of this young country, and establish that respectability which will add to its strength.
The comforts and advantages of a Country Residence, after Domestic accommodations are consulted, consist more in the beauty of the situation, than in the massy magnitude of the edifice: the choice ornaments of Architecture are by no means intended to be disparaged, they are on the contrary, not simply desirable, but requisite. The man of taste will select his situation with skill, and add elegance and animation to the best choice. In the United States the face of nature is so variegated. Nature has been so sportive, and the means so easy of acquiring positions fit to gratify the most refined and rural enjoyment, that labour and expenditure of Art is not so great as in Countries less favoured.
It would be impossible to do justice in a work, such as this is intended to be, without appropriating some plates to the sports of wild unregulated nature: the Woods, Lawns, broken Precipices and Crags: the curious and sublime of the Forest Trees: the Cataracts and Rivers: the blue Capt Mountains, and the deep, retired, and darksome Vallies.
Such scenes which decorate the grounds, and form the choicest Pictures of themselves, and which cannot be brought into the same Plate with the Villa, will be given separately, as highly necessary to form a full and correct idea of the American Country Residence.