Hints to Rural Ini{)rurcrs 187 



of all the failures in the rural improvements of the United 

 States at the present moment. 



The first error lies in supposing that good taste is a 

 natural gift, which springs heaven-born into perfect ex- 

 istence - - needing no cultivation or improvement. The 

 second is in supposing that taste alone is sufficient to the 

 production of extensive or complete works in architecture 

 or landscape gardening. 



A lively sensibility to the beautiful, is a natural faculty, 

 mistaken by more than half the world for good taste itself. 

 But good taste, in the true meaning of the terms, or, more 

 strictly, correct taste, only exists where sensibility to the 

 beautiful, and good judgment, are combined in the same 

 mind. Thus, a person may have a delicate organization, 

 which will enable him to receive pleasure from everything 

 that possesses grace or beauty, but with it so little power 

 of discrimination as to be unable to select among many 

 pleasing objects, those which, under given circumstances, 

 are the most beautiful, harmonious, or fitting. Such a 

 person may be said to have natural sensibility, or fine per- 

 ceptions, but not good taste; the latter belongs properly to 

 one who, among many beautiful objects, rapidly compares, 

 discriminates, and gives due rank to each, according to its 

 merit. 



Now, although that delicacy of organization, usually 

 called taste, is a natural gift, which can no more be acquired 

 than hearing can be by a deaf man, yet, in most persons, 

 this sensibility to the beautiful may be cultivated and 

 ripened into good taste by the study and comparison of 

 beautiful productions in nature and art. 



This is precisely what we wish to insist upon, to all per- 

 sons about to commence rural embellishments, who have 

 not a cultivated or just taste; but only sensibility, or what 

 they would call a natural taste. 



Three-fourths of all the building and ornamental garden- 

 ing of America, hitherto, have been amateur performances 

 - often the productions of persons who, with abundant 

 natural sensibility, have taken no pains to cultivate it and 



