334 Landscape Gardening 



ideas and a dormant sense of the enjoyment to be derived 

 from orderly, tasteful, and agreeable dwellings and streets, 

 do these villages merit the condemnation of all men of taste 

 and right feeling. 



The first duty of an inhabitant of forlorn neighborhoods, 

 like the village of , is to use all possible influence to 

 have the streets planted with trees. To plant trees costs 

 little trouble or expense to each property holder; and once 

 planted, there is some assurance that, with the aid of time 

 and nature, we can at least cast a graceful veil over the 

 deformity of a country home, if we cannot wholly remodel 

 its features. Indeed a village whose streets are bare of 

 trees ought to be looked upon as in a condition not less piti- 

 able than a community without a schoolmaster, or a teacher 

 of religion; for certain it is, when the affections are so dull, 

 and the domestic virtues so blunt that men do not care how 

 their own homes and villages look, they care very little for 

 fulfilling any moral obligations not made compulsory by the 

 strong arm of the law; while, on the other hand, show us a 

 Massachusetts village, adorned by its avenues of elms, and 

 made tasteful by the affection of its inhabitants and you also 

 place before us the fact, that it is there where order, good 

 character, and virtuous deportment most of all adorn the 

 lives and daily conduct of its people. 



Our correspondents who, like the one just quoted, are 

 apostles of taste, must not be discouraged by lukewarmness 

 and opposition on the part of the inhabitants of these grace- 

 less villages. They must expect sneers and derision from 

 the ignorant and prejudiced; for, strange to say, poor human 

 nature does not love to be shown that it is ignorant and 

 prejudiced; and men who would think a cowshed good 

 enough to live in, if only their wants were concerned, take 

 pleasure in pronouncing every man a visionary whose ideas 

 rise above the level of their own accustomed vision. But, 

 as an offset to this, it should always be remembered that 

 there are two great principles at the bottom of our national 

 character, which the apostle of taste in the most benighted 

 graceless village may safely count upon. One of these is 



