FORMATION OF RURAL TASTE. 



469 



the antiquarian of a thousand years hence 

 may be somewhat puzzled in assigning to 

 it a particular locality and date. 



The peculiarities which distinguish the 

 American people from all others, are no 

 less marked than those which have left 

 their impress upon the works of art in 

 ages past. In the first place, we are a 

 nation of landholders, landlords, — not mere 

 occupants, but owners of the soil. With- 

 out us, the world is divided into master and 

 slave, nabob and serf, lurd and vassal, or, 

 at best, landlord and tenant ; while here, 

 every man may, if he will, stand upon his 

 own freehold. The effect of this great 

 American fact, upon our rural taste, will 

 be its universal diffusion. It may not be 

 that it will, in every instance, distinguish 

 between the habitations of owner and occu- 

 pant ; for even in a very advanced state of 

 general cultivation there will doubtless be 

 negligent landlords, and tasteful tenants ; 

 but if any one doubts the influence of this 

 fact, let him set about planting trees and 

 improving grounds upon the land of ano- 

 ther. If its power be not made manifest 

 to him by this process, he must be a rare 

 specimen of humanity indeed. 



The eye of the traveller in Europe rests 

 with delight upon fine displays of rural 

 taste and architectural symmetry ; but these 

 are usually the offspring of concentrated 

 wealth. Like the light in a picture, they 

 stand out upon the face of the landscape to 

 challenge his admiration, and to draw his 

 attention from the dark back-ground of ser- 

 vility and vassalage which surround them. 

 In the present form of their social organi- 

 zation, it is necessary to maintain an aristo- 

 cracy. Their law of primogeniture and 

 system of entailments are retained for this 

 purpose; but we have banished them, as 

 inconsistent with the principle of universal 

 equality, which we have incorporated into 



our political institutions. The one concen- 

 trates wealth, the other diffuses it. That 

 great wealth is often a patron of the arts is 

 true ; but it by no means follows that it is 

 essential to a high development of taste. 

 The man of taste is the artist, not his 

 patron. I have been through splendid gar- 

 dens, the owners of which had set them up, 

 as confectioners do their wares in the win- 

 dow, to be gazed at and admired; and I 

 have seen such a proprietor, who did not 

 know even the names of many of his rare 

 plants. The difference between him and 

 his gardener was that one possessed taste, 

 the other vanity. 



We are furthermore distinguished as a 

 people of peace. It might not be easy to 

 convince a Mexican of that fact, just now; 

 but it is nevertheless true. Peace is our 

 policy ; and it cannot be otherwise than 

 that its softening and mellowing influence 

 should be thrown like a veil of light over 

 our national taste. Posterity will find 

 along the track of our history no baronial 

 castles, whose puissant lordlings have exer- 

 cised despotic sway over a territory forty 

 miles in extent : no ancestral halls, deco- 

 rated with helmet, spear and cuirass, grim 

 mementoes of a blood-thirsty, revengeful 

 race ; no footprints of large standing armies, 

 whose errand on earth was to scourge and 

 to destroy. 



Individual and personal responsibility, to 

 man and to his Creator, with its long train 

 of charities, diffusive benevolence, and other 

 blessings have also taken the place of as- 

 ceticism, seclusion, of veiled nuns and hood- 

 ed monks. When we shall be numbered 

 w ith the ancients, no mouldering abbey, in 

 the dim and misty retrospect, will lift its 

 spires and pointed gables above the clouds 

 of ignorance and superstition, in which its 

 foundation was laid. Education univer- 

 sally diffused, alike the hope of the patriot 



