Elms arched over it
with the regularity of a Gothic vaulting, and it straggled at its will.
Its houses, set in open lawns, illustrated all the phases of the
national taste in architecture as manifested throughout the nineteenth
century, from the wooden Greek temple with a pillared facade of the
early decades to the bizarre compositions, painted generally in dark red
and yellow, with many gables and long sweeps of slanting roof, which
marked that era's close. In most cases additions had been thrown out
from time to time, ells trailing at the back, or excrescences bulging at
the sides, that were not grotesque only because there had been little in
the first effect to spoil. In more than one instance the original fabric
was altered beyond recognition; here and there a house she could
remember had altogether disappeared; a new one had replaced it that
before long might be replaced by a newer still. To Olivia the consoling
thought was precisely in this state of transition, to which rapid
vicissitude, for better or for worse, was something like a law. It made
the downfall of her own family less exceptional, less bitter, when
viewed as part of a huge impermanency, shifting from phase to phase,
with no rule to govern it but the necessities of its own development.
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