68 



CRITIQUE ON THE JUNE HORTICULTURIST. 



Tan-hark for Mulching. — Any thing, Mr. 

 Cleveland might as well have added. How 

 many thousand loads of this invaluable mate- 

 rial do we see daily rot tine in unsightly heaps 

 around the country, that would be worth a 

 fortune if applied about the roots of all sorts 

 of trees, shrubs, and a great many vegeta- 

 bles. To strawberries, tan-bark is the best 

 mulching possible, for it keeps them moist and 

 clean — two important requisites. I hope the 

 the public will appreciate these valuable 

 notes. 



I thank iNIr. C. for his kind sentiments to- 

 ward myself ; but as I have continued my idle 

 remarks without the hope of applause or the 

 dread of censure, I trust I may survive the 

 peevishness of the discontented. 



Design for a Gothic Country House., with 

 an elevation and plan. As it is said to be but 

 a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, so 

 backward it is but a step from the ridiculous 

 to the sensible. The house in this number is 

 a good one — substantial, plain, diiiuified — 

 very much so, in all three qualities. 



I have said much abovit houses — perhaps 

 too much ; but as examples are placed before 

 me, the spirit moves, and I must needs go on. 

 And fii-st, a few words in general. lago said, 

 '■ Men should be what they seem ;" and why 

 not houses ? Our national propensity for im- 

 itation has led a gi-eat many builders not only 

 of houses but of churches and other public 

 structures, to copy the stout presentiment of 

 baronial castles, halls, temples, and rotundas, 

 tis they exist in Europe, without the slightest 

 conception of the absence of a corresponding 

 fitness of things or circumstances in ovir own 

 country to meet such structures. If we have 

 the immediate means to erect them, we cannot 

 transmit the hereditary wealth to perpetuate 

 and maintain them in our posterity; nor, if so, 

 have we the institutions which teach us to 

 venerate and preserve them ; nor a substantial 

 public taste to approve them. Yet our vanity 



and ostentation urge us on to the tinsel coun- 

 terfeit of what, in its original, is truly grand 

 and magnificent, to attain the temporary pos- 

 session of what, among those entitled to judge, 

 must only render its builder and occupant, in 

 such character, contemptible. 



The nobility and hereditary aristocracy of 

 Europe, with their immense landed estates, 

 and numerous tenantry, from whose labors 

 they draw an immense annual revenue, may, 

 with great propriety — as they view things — 

 indulge in the luxury of extended mansions, 

 halls, or castles. Indeed, it is proper for 

 them so to do. The soil of the realm is theirs 

 — and they are, either by absolute right or 

 courtesy, its legislators and masters. All the 

 pomp and circumstance which they assume, 

 they can and do maintain, as the same pomp 

 and circumstance — according to the times — 

 has been maintained through many centuries 

 past, by their sires ; and they can perpetuate 

 it to their own descendants in like manner 

 that it was perpetuated to themselves. All 

 such is the law of the land. Things are not 

 so here. The millionaire of to-day, two 

 chances to one, is the son of a " nobody" of 

 yesterday — of parents " poor, but honest," 

 and whose only inheritance was their good 

 counsel and their blessing. The wealth which 

 he amasses, by the fortuitous chances of life, 

 may be squandered or lost by his immediate 

 descendants ; or, by a remarkable vein of for- 

 tune, may be perpetuated with a due quantity 

 of saving ancestral brain, to a generation or 

 two beyond. But the castle building million- 

 aire in America has no capital but his money, 

 on which to figure in his new habitation. 

 True, he may buy a large landed estate ; he 

 may squander a hundred thousand dollars, in 

 filling his house with costly pictures, and sta- 

 tuary, and furniture ; he may roll in his cha- 

 riot, and be attended by his out-riders ; and 

 in the excess of his afi"ected gentility, may 

 " not dine till next day;" but he must do it 



