For small families, a sufficient number of sleeping apartments, a living-room, and kitchen are abundantly sufficient For Very large families with more wealth, it may be well to add a parlor; but what are called suits of rooms, are extravagances in which a farmer's family should not desire to indulge.

The ornamental grounds, (let not the reader be started,) may next be considered. Surely it is no great piece of extravagance that the grounds immediately between the buildings and the public road should be studded with ornamental trees and shrubs. The hay cut from this lawn is as good as that obtained elsewhere, and the trees once planted, require but trifling care. From a quarter of an acre to two or three acres may be kept in this way at an expense less than is often bestowed on many useless articles of interior furniture. So important do we regard this dress-ground, that without it, all the charms of a rural residence appear, to us, to be wanting. It is indeed altogether indispensable. No country-place can possibly be beautiful without it Some of the pleasantest reminiscences of our life are associated with an old fashioned farm-house, half-buried among fruit and ornamental trees. It was situated nearly in the center of a twenty-acre mowing field, with no fence near it, except that upon the line of the public road, (some twenty rods off in front,) and upon the sides of the lane which leads from the rear of the buildings to the fields and back parts of the estate.

Although in the immediate vicinity of a large inland city, and upon one of the main avenues leading into it, this place was as quiet, as still, and as full of repose as the most retiring disposition could desire. Nor did it cost one cent more to carry on the farm, nor was there any inconvenience felt from the distance of the building from the public highway. Such a lawn need never be plowed, but only occasionally dressed with com-postr-manure, and the groups of trees, once set, will almost take care of themselves. Without a lawn, of some extent, in front of the house, it is not worth while to have any regard whatever to the appearance of the place; for all attempts at ornament, where this foundation is wanting, will prove miserable failures.

The usual grounds, or the farm proper, are by some erroneously deemed to be without the limits of esthletic science. Sir Uvedale Price and some others, as we have stated in a former article, have affirmed that what is called an ornamental farm, (a ferme ornee,) is an impracticability, inasmuch as the useful element and the beautiful element were mutually destructive of each other. This idea, however, rests upon a mere shadow of a foundation; for men everywhere recognize a beauty of utility, a beauty of adaption to purpose, a beauty in what promises to afford comfort or pleasure to man. More or less of this beauty appears in whatever ministers to the happiness of the human race. It waves upon the golden wheatfields, inviting the reaper's sickle It blushes upon the sunny cheek of ripening fruit. The white milk in the pail, and the yellow butter poured from the churn are beautiful; and not less so are a group of cows, grazing in the fields, or reposing beneath the shade of the forest. A fine field of Potatoes or Corn, a yoke of oxen, at the plow, a stack of hay, are often admired, even by careless observers; nor is the term beautiful misapplied to such objects; for there are different styles of beauty.

A fine race-horse is beautiful in one way, a fine draught horse in another, and a carriage horse, or palfrey, in still another style. A curve equally useful with a straight line, is the most beautiful of the two; but let there be an obvious necessity for comfort and convenience that the lines should be straight, and they become beautiful; this is well illustrated by the walls of a parlor, the surface of a table, etc. Both for beauty and economy, there should be as few fences as possible upon a farm. In these days, when small farms are more profitable than large ones, when soiling cattle has been proved, in many instances, to be better husbandry than to pasture, there is less necessity to deform a farm with numerous costly fences. Of such fences as are indispensable, the beauty consists mainly in their being in good repair, and not choked up with brush or weeds. Where there are but few rocks, the beauty of a field will be greatly enhanced by removing them so that they shall not appear above the surface.

The beauty of the out-buildings of a farm consist very much in their adaption of purpose, and in their convenience of location with reference to the houses, to which they should appear to be as servants, each designed not for itself, but as accessories or appendages of the mansion, in which the human tenants of the farm have their abode.

We have written hurriedly, and in a very desultory manner, omitting much that might have been said more in detail. The comfort and profitable management of a farm - to say nothing of its beauty - are intimately dependent upon the construction, the location, and the interior arrangement of the farm-buildings. A pump of soft water at the kitchen sink is worth two out in the yard. A pile of dry wood near the kitchen stove, saves a world of steps for the farmer's wife during the year; and so of a thousand other tilings, many of which are proper subjects for esthetic criticism.

The embellishment of the homes of rural life in New England will be, hereafter, what the education of the common schools shall make them. If the faculty by which we perceive the beautiful be cultivated by instruction in drawing and in other ways, he tastes of the people will improve and the whole country will be rendered more pleasing to the eye of the traveler; the stern architectual abominations, which the Puritans first erected here, will cease to be imitated, and an improved taste will be attended by a higher refinement, and an increased amount of happiness. If these things be neglected, other results will follow, and the Yankees of fifty years hence will be the people of the least taste, as those of to-day are the people of the least politeness within the boundaries of the civilized world.

[We have transferred this article to our pages, because it offers some excellent hints and suggestions on points of great importance. Reform in the arrangement and architecture of farm houses and out-buildings, and in the embellishment of grounds, is greatly needed. We have given our views on this subject in this and previous number of this Journal, and we shall continue to urge its importance on the attention of our readers. - Ed].