If you have seen the best old brick mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings and fixtures within--as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis--you will gather something of the flavor of these old Southern homes.

For though such venerable mansions as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and Bordley houses, in Annapolis, are not without family resemblance to the best New England colonial houses, the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the differences, not only between the mansions of the North and South, but between the builders of them.

The contrast is subtle, but marked.
Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped with austere simplicity.

The man who built it was probably a scholar but he was almost certainly a Calvinist.

He habited himself in black and was served by serving maids, instead of slaves in livery.