







JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AND RURAL TASTE, 



Vol. IV. 



JUNE, 1850. 



No. 12. 



Without any boasting, it may safely be 

 said, that the natural features of our com- 

 mon country (as the speakers in Congress 

 rail her,) are as agreeable and prepossess- 

 ing as those of any other land — whether 

 merry England, la belle France, or the Ger- 

 man fatherland. We have greater lakes, 

 larger rivers, broader and more fertile prai- 

 ries than the old world can show ; and if 

 the Alleghanies are rather dwarfish when 

 compared to the Alps, there are peaks and 

 summits, " castle hills" and volcanoes, in 

 our great back-bone range of the Pacific — 

 the Rocky Mountains — which may safely 

 hold up their heads along with Mont 

 Blanc and the Jungfrau. 



Providence, then, has blessed the coun- 

 try — our country — with " natural born" fea- 

 tures, which we may look upon and be glad. 

 But how have we sought to deform the fair 

 landscape here and there by little, miserable, 

 shabby-looking towns and villages; not 

 miserable and shabby-looking from the po- 

 verty and wretchedness of the inhabitants — 

 for in no land is there more peace and 

 plenty — but miserable and shabby-looking 

 from the absence of taste, symmetry, or- 

 der, space, proportion, — all that constitutes 

 beauty. Ah, well and truly did Pope say, 



•'God made the country, but man made the town.'' 



Vol- iv. 37 



For in the one, we everywhere see utility 

 and beauty harmoniously combined, while 

 the other presents us but too often the re- 

 verse ; that is to say, the marriage of utility 

 and deformity. 



Some of our readers may remind us that 

 we have already preached a sermon from 

 this text. No matter ; we should be glad 

 to preach fifty ; yes, or even establish a 

 sect, — as that seems the only way of making 

 proselytes now, — whose duty it should be 

 to convert people living in the country 

 towns to the true faith; we mean the true 

 rural faith, viz., that it is immoral and un- 

 civilized to live in mean and uncouth vil- 

 lages, where there is no poverty, or want of 

 intelligence in the inhabitants ; that there 

 is nothing laudable in having a piano-forte 

 and mahogany chairs in the parlor, where 

 the streets outside are barren of shade 

 trees, destitute of side-walks, and populous 

 with pigs and geese. 



We are bound to admit (with a little shame 

 and humiliation, — being a native of New- 

 York, the "empire state,") — that there is one 

 part of the Union where the millenium of 

 countrv towns, and good government, and ru- 

 ral taste has not only commenced, but is in full 

 domination. We mean, of course, Massa- 

 chusetts. The traveller may go from one 



