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CRITIQUE ON NOVEMBER HORTICULTURIST. 



vulgarity — but a keeping with all which 

 surround it. Not castellated, nor magnifi- 

 cent ; neither ostentatious nor pretending, 

 but plain, dignified, quiet, and unobtrusive; 

 yet of ample dimensions, and exceeding 

 convenience. Then, in park or lawn, on 

 hill or plain, flanked with mossy foliage, 

 and well kept grounds, it becomes a per- 

 fect picture in a finished landscape. [Most 

 excellent and sensible. Ed.] 



The ability to plan a proper country 

 house is a quality of rare endowments, 

 and can be acquired only after much 

 thought, and a very considerable experi- 

 ence ; and yet there is hardly a haber- 

 dasher, or gingerbread baker of the city, 

 who has made his ten or twenty thousand 

 dollars by a lucky run in trade, but what 

 thinks he is abundantly competent to plan 

 the "nicest kind" of a villa, on a smart 

 scale ; while if he be a successful mounte- 

 bank, a prodigy exhibitor, or a play-actor, 

 nothing short of a Chinese pagoda, a Tu- 

 dor castle, or a Turkish palace can slake 

 his appetite for display, and when com- 

 pleted, remain his own perhaps for hardly 

 a longer term than he has spent in its an- 

 ticipations and building. Very well, let 

 those gentlemen have their way. The 

 money they cost is no doubt their own, — 

 for the time being — and living in a free 

 country, they have a right to spend it ; 

 and so long as the example they thus set, 

 is not pernicious, which, by the way, it is 

 very apt to be, it is nobody's business. 

 But in this villa building age, it is of some 

 amount, that those who intend retiring 

 into sensible and practical country life, 

 build in such a manner as not to make their 

 residences a perpetual source of regret 

 and annoyance to themselves thereafter. 



But enough of this for one chapter. I 

 shall probably soon meet with a text for 

 another chapter. 



Your Leader. — All right and practical. 

 You've got hold of the real handle in 

 Guano culture. Let the cultivator use it 

 thus, and he will have little to complain of, 

 but everything to commend in its application. 



Transplanting on the unbroken sod, fyc. 

 — " Why under the sun" don't prairie folk 

 both understand, and do like Mr. Ii am- 

 mond, of Shandy Hall ? I like the name, 

 too, — Shandy Hall ! It reminds me of dear 

 old Tristam, and Uncle Toby — the lus- 

 cious widow Wadham — oh, that eye of 

 hers, and that fair cheek, and delicate 

 arm ! How could the kind old fellow re- 

 sist them ? But I am straying. I have 

 often thought, when riding over our mag- 

 nificent western prairies, with their finely 

 wooded islands in the distance, and the 

 beautiful swelling eminences, so tempt- 

 ingly offered to the settler, how rich and 

 luxurious they might be rendered by the 

 display of a little taste in their cultivation 

 and improvement, as contrasted with the 

 pig-stye appearance they so often present 

 in the dwellings and farms of those who 

 occupy them. Here, now, is a plain, prac- 

 tical account of what is done by a man of 

 judgment and skill, with but a moderate 

 outlay, and in a brief period of time. 

 Would that this example could be studied 

 and imitated by every prairie dweller ; 

 what a beautiful country would those prai- 

 ries soon become ! Day after day have I 

 ridden over them, delighted with their 

 wild beauty, and sad only when I ap- 

 proached the wretched enclosures and the 

 mean houses which occupy them, destitute 

 of even the most trifling shrub or tree to 

 shadow their nakedness. But even the 

 magnificent oaks, elms, or walnuts which 

 perchance had grown through centuries of 

 luxuriance on the ridge where the set- 

 tler had squatted himself, remorsely gird- 

 led because it shaded a portion of his corn 



