As American villages grow into cities, the increase in
the value of land usually tends to crowd the houses together into blocks
as in a European city. But in some of our western cities founded and
settled by people from New England, this spacious fashion of building
has been retained for streets occupied by dwelling-houses. In
Cleveland--a city on the southern shore of Lake Erie, with a population
about equal to that of Edinburgh--there is a street some five or six
miles in length and five hundred feet in width, bordered on each side
with a double row of arching trees, and with handsome stone houses, of
sufficient variety and freedom in architectural design, standing at
intervals of from one to two hundred feet along the entire length of the
street. The effect, it is needless to add, is very noble indeed. The
vistas remind one of the nave and aisles of a huge cathedral.

Now this generous way in which a New England village is built is very
closely associated with the historical origin of the village and with
the peculiar kind of political and social life by which it is
characterized. First of all, it implies abundance of land. As a rule the
head of each family owns the house in which he lives and the ground on
which it is built. The relation of landlord and tenant, though not
unknown, is not commonly met with. No sort of social distinction or
political privilege is associated with the ownership of land; and the
legal differences between real and personal property, especially as
regards ease of transfer, have been reduced to the smallest minimum that
practical convenience will allow. Each householder, therefore, though an
absolute proprietor, cannot be called a miniature lord of the manor,
because there exists no permanent dependent class such as is implied in
the use of such a phrase. Each larger proprietor attends in person to
the cultivation of his own land, assisted perhaps by his own sons or by
neighbours working for hire in the leisure left over from the care of
their own smaller estates. So in the interior of the house there is
usually no domestic service that is not performed by the mother of the
family and the daughters. Yet in spite of this universality of manual
labour, the people are as far as possible from presenting the appearance
of peasants. Poor or shabbily-dressed people are rarely seen, and there
is no one in the village whom it would be proper to address in a
patronizing tone, or who would not conside