CRITIQUE ON THE FEB. HORTICULTURIST. 



What a fund of valuable information would it thus throw together — what a fund of in 

 struction would be thus combined, making it a thoroughly national work of reference for 

 all time, in many most interesting subjects! The circle of your correspondence should be 

 greatly enlarged. Distant territories, now scarcely heard of in your pages, should contri- 

 bute their share of information, and a circle of intelligence would grow out of it, most 

 profitable to your readers in the information it would convey, and delightful in the inte- 

 rest it would impart to those who read simply for pleasure. 



Should a Republic encourage the j^rts. — No : except the arts of attack and defence, 

 either in billingsgate or boxing — not much matter which, for they are both practiced in 

 Congress, at Washington. " We are a government of the people," and that people sui 

 generis. When the " freest, the taost intelligent, and the most enlightened nation on the 

 earth," are sufficiently cultivated in the arts to know the difference between the designs 

 of a village carpenter, and those of Michael Angelo, their "government" may do some- 

 thing to encourage the arts; and that will require something besides " Art Unions," who 

 spend five shillings for sack, to a half-penny for bread, after the fashion of Jack Falstaif, 

 to accomplish. 



Some years ago I was gazing at Greenough's statue of Washington, then in the ro- 

 tunda at our national capitol. By the way, I never liked either the posture or the drape- 

 ry of that piece of sculpture. The attitude of Washington should be standing, like his 

 own towering greatness, superior to everything around it. A few feet from me stood that 

 elegant man, and accomplished scholar and statesman, William C. Preston, of South 

 Carolina. He was looking upon the statue with much interest, and, as I thought, a criti- 

 cal eye. At that moment a couple of the "sovereigns" passed by, one of whom was 

 picking with his fingers, the kernels out of some walnuts which he held in his hand. He 

 had got hold of a hard one, which, after trying with his teeth, still held fast to the 

 " meat." Stopping short against the statue, he exclaimed : " I say Bob — if I had a ham- 

 mer, I'd crack this nut on that old chap's toes!" 



We have been fortunate enough in this country to get some fine specimens of architec- 

 ture in our government buildings, and many more in our public structures where govern- 

 ment had nothing to do with them. So too, in the way of pictures and statuary. Now 

 and then, we have a tolerable public garden, or park, but on a small scale. The eflfect of 

 these will be to produce better ones. We must get on by degrees; and after a while, and 

 a good while too — we may possibly get up by the side of some lesser things among the 

 barbarian Italians, French and Mohammedans. From the constitution of our government, 

 and the operation of our institutions, w^e can never have in America, that riotous display, 

 or that high cultivation of the arts, which exist in the despotisms abroad. " The great- 

 est good of the greatest number," contrary to that of " the greatest good of the fewest 

 number," as there, is our theory and our practice. Private fortunes in this country are 

 not sufficiently large to indulge in a display of the arts to any extent; nor is it often that 

 the wealth of any one family — even if the successive generations of such fiimily were dis- 

 posed to indulge in it — sufficiently large to carry forward a work of this kind to coanplo- 

 tion, with any grandeur of design. Government, of course, will not do it, save in detach- 

 ed parcels for its own use, and those not largely expensive. A despotism, or a monarch}'^, 

 where the will of a single man, or the combined will of many, and that will perpetual for 

 the time of a generation, or longer, only can carry out great national works of art. 



Another question then comes up; are they, as a whole, beneficial to man? I mean such 

 magnificent conceptions of art, as those of Michael Angelo, Raffaele, and the 

 masters of centuries gone by — for in these better days for the people, there exist, 



