BEAUTY OF NEGLECTED THINGS. 



for our fashions, our luxuries, and — alas ! that it should be — sometimes a little tincture 

 of our morals, too, so we must needs go there for the arboreal adornment of our 

 homes and the beautifying of our lawns. The " Schottisch," the "Polka" et id genus 

 omne, being received upon trust as the perfection of grace and social enjoyment, why 

 should not our gardening beauties need the same approval ? Trees and shrubs must 

 smack of the salt-water and have a foreign and traveled air, to be appreciated by us 

 Yankees. And it seems — so we learn from competent authority — that some of our 

 rustic aboriginals, as the Kalmia, uncared for, when its wealth of laurel-like foliage and 

 crowns of dazzling bloom were found in every wood, are imported in hot haste by our 

 discriminating countrymen, now that their beauties and claims are appreciated and 

 recognized in foreign courts of taste. Just as our Connecticut tobacco, being too vul- 

 gar to grace the lips of our careful smokers, is exported to the AVest Indies and comes 

 back without breaking bulk, stamped as genuine Havana by the seal of the custom 

 house, and the approval of delighted connoisseurs. 



This arises from our careless ignorance of the beauties patent in our woods and 

 fields, and our indolence in allowing others to furnish our judgment of nature, as they 

 do in some degree, our standards of literature and art. But the signs of the times are 

 plain to be seen ; indifference is vanishing ; a wide-awake spirit (I speak not as a 

 Know-Nothing) is abroad in the land, and our modest natives, content to bide their 

 time, are beginning to be appreciated as they deserve. The day has come when beau- 

 tiful things shall not be condemned because common, nor ugly strangers be welcomed 

 because they are foreigners. 



Why, my dear Mr. Editor, need you lament and say, " Oh ! for the Hollies, and 

 Laurels, and Rhododendrons that flourish so gaily in England, and give such chai-ms 

 to the country landscape" ? Have we not IloUies,* and Laurels,} and Rhododendrons J 

 as good as the best Englishman of them all .' — that are natives, too, of our frozen and 

 thawed northern climate ? (1) Let us be convince;! that we cannot grow the Wads- 

 worth Oaks in the time of a cucumber vine, nor the Elms of New Haven like Ailan- 

 thuses, and that Nature, care, and time, will work wonders. "Let patience have its 

 perfect work," and all will be well. 



To deduce a practical conclusion from the above, we will discourse awhile anent 

 some of our favorites, and try to show what can be done with common things. An I 

 first, I will mention the Red Cedar, [Juniperus Virgiuiana^ which grows abundantly 

 in many of our Northern States, seeming to seek as of preference the driest and most 

 sterile soils along our road-sides and in our neglected pasture-fields, which latter I have 

 seen almost covered in a few years by a luxuriant growth of this desirable evergreen. 

 Although its native habitats are generally sterile, no tree will show more quickly the 

 effects- of a deep and moderately rich soil, in which it will grow with great rapidity. 

 It is beautiful as a single tree. It seems to sport from seed into almost innumerable 

 varieties, of every habit of growth and every shade of green; — some throw out long 

 and sparsely-foliaged branches at stiff right-angles with the trunk, — some have the 

 loose and airy appearance of the Hemlock, that queen of evergreens, — and others 

 are as closely conical as an Arbor Vitae. Their shades of color vary as their forms, 

 from the liveliest green to the most sombre mixture of that color and blackishness 

 (excuse the word — none other can express my idea so well). I have one now on 



* Ilex opaca. t Kalmia latifolia. $ Ehodoilendron maximum, 



