

JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. 



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W W to popularize that taste for rural beauty, which gives to every beloved home in 



the country its greatest outward charm, and to the country itself its highest at- 

 traction, is a question which must often occur to many of our readers. A traveller 

 never journeys through England without lavishing all the epithets of admiration on the 

 rural beauty of that gardenesque country ; and his praises are as justly due to the 

 way-side cottages of the humble laborers, (whose pecuniary condition of life is far be- 

 low that of our numerous small house-holders,) as to the great palaces and villas. 

 Perhaps the loveliest and most fascinating of the " cottage homes," of which Mrs. 

 Hemans has so touchingly sung, are the clergymen's dwellings in that country; dwel- 

 lings for the most part, of very moderate size, and no greater cost than are common in 

 all the most thriving and populous parts of the Union — but which, owing to the love 

 of horticulture, and the taste for something above the merely useful, which characteri- 

 ses their owners, as a class, are, for the most part, radiant with the bloom and embel- 

 lishment of the loveliest flowers and shrubs. 



The contrast with the comparatively naked and neglected country dwellings that are 

 the average rural tenements of our country at large, is very striking. Undoubtedly, 

 this is, in part, owing to the fact that it takes a longer time, as Lord Bacon said a 

 century ago, " to garden finely than to build stately." But the newness of our civiliza- 

 tion is not sufficient apology. If so, we should be spared the exhibition of gay carpets, 

 fine mirrors and furniture in the "front parlor," of many a mechanic's, working-man's 

 and farmer's comfortable dwelling, where the " bare and laid" have pretty nearly su- 

 preme control in the " front yard." 



What we lack, perhaps, more than all, is, not the capacity to perceive and enjoy 

 the beauty of ornamental trees and shrubs — the rural embellishment alike of the cottage 

 and the villa, but we are deficient in the knowledge, and the opportunity of knowing 

 beautiful human habitations are made by a little taste, time, and means, expen 

 this way. 



July 1, 1852. 



No. VII. 



