Rural Architecture; being a complete description of Farm-houses, Cottages, and outbuildings. By Lewis F. Allbk. New-York: Saxton, 1 vol. 384 p.p. 12 mo.

When a plain practical farmer undertakes to write a book on architecture, no one will expect his book to smack of Vreuvius or Pallamo, any more than one would expect a good house painter to turn out Vandykes and Raphaels. Accordingly, any one who looks for very correct and studied architecture in Mr. Allen's excellent book will be disappointed - since not one of the buildings represented in the volume would bear criticism by the laws of beauty and proportion, which govern, or are supposed to govern, architecture as a fine art.

Having said this, we are bound to add that the author entirely disclaims being an architect, and begins his preface by an apology for " attempting a work on a subject of which he is not a professional master, either in design or execution".

On the other hand, we take great pleasure in saying that Mr. Allen has not written a book like many books that are now inflicted upon the public, for either money or fame, but because he had something to say. If he is not an architect, he is a sagacious clear headed, American farmer, who knows, perhaps, better than most architects, what sort of comforts and conveniences farmers want - and how to get at such a house, and such barns and out-buildings as are really practicable, and adapted to the circumstances of an American farmer's life. Accordingly, every page is full of instruction for those of the farming class who are about building, and instruction not drawn from theory - but from actual experience - the experience of a man who lives, eats, drinks, and sleeps like a fanner, and who makes all about him fall into its right place, and obey that master spirit which marks the difference between the chaos of the sluggard, and the order of the true husbandman.

Very few persons live upon a (arm fire years* without wishing to build something, if it is only a piggery; but the misfortune of farmers as a class, has hitherto been, that for the most part they " build as their fathers builded" - they take no pains to see what any one with more knowledge or thought than themselves may have done; unlike mechanics and manufacturers they seek none of the new improvements, and consequently, but for Yankee plough makers, and inventors of all sorts, who wont let the farm escape them althogether, they echo the song of the fishes who heard the sermon of Saint Anthony:

"Much delighted were they, Bat preferred the old way".

Mr. Allen is none of this antideluvian race of farmers. He is for making the most of farmers and farming - looking upon it as the occupation of occupations, and its followers as men who ought live with lest ostentation and more substantial comfort, than any other. His remarks on this topic are all in the right spirit, and though not original with him, it is most gratifying to see by his utterance of them, the farming class and its wants vindicated by a champion from among themselves. We have always noticed that in this country, any reform, to be salutary and progressive, must originate among the very men who are in need of it; and architects may publish designs for farm houses for centuries, if farmers do not feel the need of any improvement; it is no better than preaching in English to our Rocky Mountain Indians.

Hence, we look upon it as the great merit of Mr. Allen 's book, that it will cause in the farming class a desire for improvement, by placing before them plans of dwellings and farm buildings adapted to their wants, and by treating of these wants in a way that they can easily understand. Put a plain farmer in direct connection with an architect who considers high art as the first end of his artistic existence, and the two parties will most probably so completely misunderstand each other, as to do each other harm instead of good. And besides this, American farmers, as a class, are not in want of the aid of professional architects. Their homes would be quite spoiled to our own taste, if treated according to any severe rules of art. We are most delighted with that farm house which is most simply and directly expressive of a comfortable, substantial, rural life - with little decorations except those of trees and vines, and characterised, inside and outside, by the simplest good taste, and most direct expression of harmony, with the simple natural life of the agriculturist in the midst of his fields. When we said that Mr. Allen's book had very little architecture in it, we should not be understood to find fault with it on this account.

If farmers can, by means of such works as this, be led to think for themselves on the subject it treats of, and commence by raising their homes in the scale of comfort, utility and convenience, and the charm of looking like farmer's houses, we shall feel confident that beauty of form and expression will speedily follow.

The plans of farm-dwellings in this volume, are valuable mainly for the excellent common sense they show, and the knowledge of the wants of the farmer's every day life. We are confident that an hour's study of them by any farmer about to build, will materially change and improve all his crude notions, and put him in the way of contriving, with the aid of his carpenter, a very satisfactory home for himself. There is very little aim at either elegance or beauty in the interior arrangement - but for the most part the buildings do not demand it, and greater beauty of plan could not be achieved without a neglect of the more obvious and necessary attributes and conveniences demanded. All the minor conveniences of the farm-house, wood-house, wash-house, piggery, stables, Ac., have not only been well considered, bat their arrangement is generally such as to command the greatest convenience and least loss of time and labor. The advantage of Mr. Allen's plans for farm-houses, over most of those that have been published in the Agricultural Journals, is very striking.

As regards the exterior of the designs, we are not so well satisfied. There is a want of •obstante in the construction of the verandas, gables, and eaves, that conveys a flimsy appearance to a farm-house, which is quite contrary to the expression it should have. We very well know that the reason of this is that they are, for the most part, wooden buildings - and that cheapness leads our carpenters to build any thing of wood as light as possible. Having constructed several wooden buildings on a somewhat contrary principle - making all the thin lines twice as thick as usual, with the greatest improvement in appearance and expression, we cannot but feel that cheap carpentry will always have a tendency to degrade the character of all our rural dwellings, so long as they are of wood. While wood is cheaper than brick or stone, of course we must submit to this state of things - and it is not, perhaps, unfitting to the still unsettled condition of our new country, that its first dwellings should be of wood. Bat we miss in all our wooden farm-houses, that substantial, solid, real look, that harmonizes so well both with rural life and pastoral scenery, and which is always felt on seeing farm-houses well built of honest solid stone or brick.

Any one who has seen English farm-houses, or some of the best specimens in Pennsylvania, will at once understand what we mean.* It is the difference between froth and essence - between flimsy make-shift and genuine fact. But this is, (at least in the country) our wooden age, and Mr. Allen, as well as the majority of us, must accept it as such, and build and live, for the time and generation, in wooden houses. Bat we would counsel the farmers who can afford it, to give their wooden houses some appearance of solidity. Let them thicken the eaves, make the veranda posts solid and heavy, and have no light fancy work - and so eschew all those ghostly scantling apparitions of dwellings that rise up under the saw and chisel of very cheap contracts all over the country.

Mr. Allen touches upon every thing that relates to the inside and outside of the house or the farm, and if his straight forward, pithy remarks, will only be taken for their full value, by the wives and daughters of the class to which he belongs, we shall speedily look for a new and more healthy pulsation in the social heart of the masses of the people. Having been preaching the same kind of doctrine for some time past ourselves, we need not say that we most cordially agree with all our author says in the following remarks on "house and cottage furniture:"