The Village of Harlaxton is, if possible, more interesting to us than even the new mansion and gardens. We have seen many ornamented villages, both at home and abroad, but none so original, and so much to our taste, as this of Mr. Gregory's. Some of old date are too like rows of street houses, such as those of Newnham Courtenay near Oxford, and Harewood near Leeds; others are too affectedly varied and picturesque, such as that at Blaize Castle, near Bristol; and some have the houses bedaubed with ornaments that have not sufficient relation to use, as when rosettes and sculptures are stuck on the walls, instead of applying facings to the windows, porches to the doors, and characteristic shafts to the chimney tops. We recollect one near Warsaw, which is a repetition of the Grecian temple, with a portico at each end; and one at Peckra, near Moscow, every opening in which has a pediment over it, with highly enriched barge-boards. In some villages, the attempt is made to ornament every house by trelliswork round the doors and windows, which produces great sameness of appearance, and if ornamental, is so at the expense of comfort; the creepers, by which the trelliswork is covered, darkening the rooms, and encouraging insects; while, in other villages, the cottages are so low and so small, that it is obvious to a passing spectator they cannot contain a single wholesome room. However, though we find fault with villages ornamented in these ways, we are still glad to see them; because any kind of alteration in the dwellings and gardens of country labourers can hardly fail to be an improvement, both with reference to the occupiers and to the country at large. The great value of Mr. Gregory's improvements in the village of Harlaxton is, that all the leading features have some kind of relation to use, and are, in fact, to be considered more as parts added to the very plainest cottages, in order to render them complete, than as ornaments put on to render them beautiful. All the cottages were built by Mr. Gregory's predecessor in the plainest possible style, but fortunately substantial and comfortable, and two stories high; some of them single, and some of them double, and almost all of them built of stone some yards back from the street, and surrounded by ample gardens. In improving them, Mr. Gregory would appear to have been guided by the following considerations: - 1. To bestow the principal expense on the main features, such as the porch, the chimney tops, and the gardens. Almost all the cottages have porches, some projecting from the walls, and others forming recesses: the latter have sometimes open places like loggias over them; and the former, sometimes roofs in the usual manner, sometimes balconies, and occasionally small rooms with gable ends, or pavilion roofs, according to the style. The greatest attention has been paid to the chimney tops, which are in some cases of brick, and in others of stone; sometimes of English domestic Gothic, at other times local English, such as those common in the neighbourhood of the Lakes or in Derby shire, &c.: Italian, French, or Swiss chimney tops of different kinds also occur. The gable ends are finished with crow steps, in the Belgian and Scotch style in some cases, with Gothic parapets in others; and various descriptions of bargeboards are used, wherever the roof projects over the end walls. Porches, cornices of brick or stone, ornamental cornice boards, or stone or wooden brackets, are also introduced in front, as supports or ornaments to the roof. Every garden has been laid out and planted by Mr. Gregory's head gardener; creepers and climbers being introduced in proper places, in such a manner as that no two gardens are planted with the same climbers. 2. Always to have some architectural feature in or about the garden, as well as on the cottage. For example; almost every garden here has its draw-well, and each of these wells is ren dered architectural, and ornamented in a different way. All the wells are surrounded by parapets, either circular, square, of open work, or solid. Some are covered with roofs supported by carpentry; others with roofs supported by stones, round or square; some are in the form of stone cupolas: in some, the water is raised by buckets suspended from a picturesque archi tectural appendage; in others, it is raised by pumps attached to wooden framework of most original construction, massive and architectural; and so on. All the gardens are of course separated from the street by a fence, and there are not two of these fences in the village exactly alike. Some are hedges rising from the inside of dwarf walls; some are walls like those of sunk fences, the garden in the inside being of the height of the top of the wall, which is covered in some cases with a plain stone coping, in others with a brick coping; in some with a stone coping in the Gothic manner, in others with an Elizabethan coping; in some with a parapet of openwork, in others with stone or brick piers for supporting horizontal bars of wood for creepers, as in Italy; or without being connected by bars of wood, but terminating in rough earthenware jars for flowers. Each front wall must, of course, have a gateway to enter to the garden and the cottage, and no two of these gateways throughout the village are alike. Some are wickets between wooden posts, others Gothic or Elizabethan gates between stone piers, square or round; some are close gates, in the manner of many in Switzerland, in others the gates are under arches, some of which are pointed, and others round-headed; some have pediments over the arches, others horizontal high-raised copings, as in the neighbourhood of Naples; and some have small wooden roofs or canopies after the manner of the gateways to the country houses in the neighbourhood of Dantzic. The gateways, in short, afford great variety of character. Besides the front boundaries of the gardens, there are the side boundaries, which are also varied, partly in a similar manner, and partly differently. In some cases, the boundary, though sufficiently well known to the occupants, does not appear at all to the stranger; in others it is of holly, of box, of laurel, of thorn, of flowering shrubs, of fruit trees, or of a mixture of several or all of these, with or without architectural piers, bee-houses, arbours, covered seats, tool-sheds, or other appendages. The gardens, it may be observed, are all laid out differently. In some, the main walk from the street gate to the porch is of flagstone, in others it is paved with small stones; in some with wood, in others with brick; in some with gravel, and in others with broken stone. It is edged with box, with thyme, with ivy, with a broad belt of turf, with a raised edging of stone, or with a flat belt of brick, and sometimes even with wood. The gardens are variously planted, and in some there are very properly trees and shrubs clipped into artificial shapes; two spruce firs form very handsome balls.
