470 



FORMATION OF RURAL TASTE. 



and the theme of the demagogue, with the 

 iron pen of the steam and the lightning, 

 is writing its record upon the monuments 

 we are now rearing along our pathway. 



I cheerfully acknowledge my obligations 

 to a pen, very familiar to the readers of 

 this journal, for the most valuable efforts 

 in this delightful work of beautifying the 

 earth, and of moulding into forms of sur- 

 passing beauty the materials of which our 

 national rural taste is in process of forma- 

 tion. The country owes a debt of gratitude 

 for the Landscape Gardening, the Cottage 

 Architecture, the Fruits and Fruit Trees, 

 and the Horticulturist. I admire such 

 rich and tasteful displays of our noble art 

 as the manor of Livingston, Beaverwyck, 

 Blithewood, and others. These costly spe- 

 cimens of architectural grace and rural 

 beauty, while they elicit our admiration, 

 are perhaps in some danger of begetting in 

 the minds of the masses the erroneous im- 

 pression, that the pleasures of tasteful cul- 

 tivation are not within their reach. The 

 farmer, for instance, of one, five, or ten 

 thousand dollars, takes up a work on cot- 

 tage architecture. His eye glistens with 

 pleasure as he runs over its tasteful de- 

 signs. He commences reading, and goes 

 on with increasing interest until he comes 

 to the estimate ! He drops his book, and 

 raises his hands, in utter astonishment ; 

 and the vision of a rural cottage, with 

 beautiful grounds, at which his imagina- 

 tion had been busily at work, is gone for- 

 ever. Why, friend, did you think you 

 could build a house without money ? No, 

 quoth he; but who would think of abstract- 

 ing so large a sum from so small a capital ? 

 I wish you, Mr. Downing, to tell this man 

 how much of natural beauty he might ap- 

 propriate and enjoy at almost no cost at 

 all. Make him understand that there is a 

 bank, whose funds are exhaustless, upon 



which he may draw, with the certainty that 

 his checks will never be dishonored ; al- 

 though he may have neither a manor of 

 Livingston, a Beaverwyck, or a Blithe- 

 wood for endorser. Let him listen to the 

 eloquent Lamartine : " Believe not that 

 those enjoyments are reserved for the 

 mighty of the earth, to the real owners of 

 riches or of gardens of celebrity, like those 

 of Versailles or the Tuilleries. * * * 

 No, there is no need of wealth, of magnifi- 

 cence, of extended domain, to enjoy all 

 that God has hidden of happiness in the 

 culture or spectacle of vegetable life. Those 

 are pleasures which it is not given to for- 

 tune to appropriate and monopolize. Nature 

 is never aristocratic. She has not endowed 

 the poor with other perceptions than the 

 rich, of natural delights, nor the idler than 

 the laboring man. * * * "j^f^e human 

 soul is endowed with such a faculty of ex- 

 tension and contraction that it can over- 

 flow the universe, and, like Alexander, find 

 it too narrow for its desires ; or it can con- 

 centrate, and, as it were, fold itself up, 

 upon a mere spot of earth, and exclaim, 

 with the sage of Tiber, with his half acre 

 sowed with mallows, and watered by a lit- 

 tle streamlet, — ' This little spot of earth is 

 all the world to me.' " 



Every cit has his day-dream of a 

 country seat or suburban villa, where the 

 retired merchant, artist or professional man, 

 relieved from the bustle of business, is to 

 enjoy his eventide in the calmness and 

 quietude of rural life. He looks forward to 

 the time when the drudgery of business is 

 to be abandoned, or left to other hands ; 

 the slock of money or wisdom he has ac- 

 quired, standing as his permanent invest- 

 ment in the firm, against the labor, activity 

 and industry of the junior partner, on whose 

 head " no silver hair has yet appeared, to 

 mark the wane of lime." These imagin. 



