11 istorica I Sketches 



itary, there is, at least, what is more gratifying to the 

 feelings of the philanthropist, the almost entire absence of 

 a very poor class in the country; while we have, on the 

 other hand, a large class of independent landholders, who 

 are able to assemble around them, not only the useful and 

 convenient, but the agreeable and beautiful, in country life. 



The number of individuals among us who possess wealth 

 and refinement sufficient to enable them to enjoy the 

 pleasures of a country life, and who desire in their private 

 residences so much of the beauties of landscape gardening 

 and rural embellishment as may be had without any enor- 

 mous expenditure of means, is every day increasing. And 

 although, until lately, a very meagre plan of laying out the 

 grounds of a residence, was all that we could lay claim to, 

 yet the taste for elegant rural improvements is advancing 

 now so rapidly, that we have no hesitation in predicting 

 that in half a century more, there will exist a greater num- 

 ber of beautiful villas and country seats of moderate extent, 

 in the Atlantic States, than in any country in Europe, 

 England alone excepted. With us, a feeling, a taste, or an 

 improvement, is contagious; and once fairly appreciated and 

 established in one portion of the country, it is disseminated 

 with a celerity that is indeed wonderful, to every other 

 portion. And though it is necessarily the case where ama- 

 teurs of any art are more numerous than its professors, 

 that there will be, in devising and carrying plans into exe- 

 cution, many specimens of bad taste, and perhaps a suffi- 

 cient number of efforts to improve without any real taste 

 whatever, still we are convinced the effect of our rural 

 embellishments * will in the end be highly agreeable, as a 



: It may be observed that Mr. Downing speaks constantly of "em- 

 bellishments." The modern Landscape Gardener abhors this word, as 

 all phrases referring to "ornamental" treatment. This is because the 

 modern professional Landscape Gardener thinks of his art as something 

 fundamental, radical, as dealing with the most elemental facts of struc- 

 ture, rather than as concerned with any superficial "embellishment." 

 This change of feeling marks a distinct professional advance, though, 

 unfortunately, the lay public still thinks of Landscape Gardening as 

 mainly an incidental ornamental afterthought a sort of horticultural 

 camouflage to gross utilities. -- F. A. \V. 



