€;epessi0n ai $urpse. 



ANDSCAPE Gardeners and Architects sometimes use 

 a phrase that has much meaning. "Expression of Pur- 

 pose" has a significance in many cases which no other 

 simple phrase conveys. The builder who erects a mansion 

 having a few little port-holes for third story windows, ex- 

 presses a determined purpose of making a hot chamber 

 for those who may have to sleep in the attic j the gar- 

 dener who omits to mow his lawn at the proper time, says 

 to the spectator, either that he is careless, or that his pur- 

 posed neatness has been interfered with ; and so through 

 the whole catalogue of building, planting, and garden or farm work. The com- 

 mercial gardener who is a beginner, and with his capital to make, if he erects a 

 grapery or a rosary of a height that is too small for ornament, or with inferior or 

 second-hand materials, until he can do better, violates none of the proprieties ; his 

 purpose is fully expressed, and we are not pained to consider how ornamental a few 

 hundred dollars more might have made his project. 



Violations of the proper expression of purpose are so common that we are only 

 puzzled to keep down our illustrations. They result too often from ignorance, and 

 rom a want of observation when good examples are before us. We have lately seen 

 an attempt to conceal a kitchen which has a frontage on a parallel with the mansion, 

 by planting the Weymouth pine in front of each window, trees which notoriously 

 produce but partially the desired screen, and are almost certain to lose their lower 

 limbs ; hemlocks regularly sheared twice a year, would have a different and happier 

 result. The stable, again, is too often at a distance from the kitchen garden ; the 

 manure for enriching the crops is placed inconveniently, from the time employed in 

 transporting it; the kitchen garden is often removed far from, the dwelling, and the 

 fruit has to be carried to such a distance that it is injured, and when it is growing 

 it is not under the eye of the master; the purposed object of having fine fruit when 

 it is wanted, or a spear or two of celery for the soup, in a hurry, is defeated. We 

 pardon the nearness of the kitchen garden to the house, because the purpose is ex- 

 pressed, at the same time that the full exposure of the manure heap to the windows 

 is entirely needless ; the processes may nearly all be concealed, while the object is 

 fully attained; the growing fruit interspersed among the vegetables, will take off, to 

 the cultivated eye, anything like disgust; the stables within reach in stormy weather 

 also express the care which the inmates of the house exercise over their useful 

 animals. 



Again, a distinction must be made between the words ornament and decoration. 

 ''The former should include," says a judicious critic, "every enrichment bearing 

 the semblance of utility; the latter is supposed to have no relation whatever to the 

 uses or construction of the building ; thus, for instance, a house may answer all the 

 purposes of habitation without a column, a pilaster, an entablature, a pediment, a 



VOL. 5. 



J 1. 



