How to Popularize the Taste for Planting 365 



comfortable dwelling, where the "bare and bald" have 

 pretty nearly supreme control in the "front yard." 



What we lack perhaps more than all is not the capacity to 

 perceive and enjoy the beauty of ornamental trees and 

 shrubs --the rural embellishment alike of the cottage and 

 the villa - - but we are deficient in the knowledge and the 

 opportunity of knowing how beautiful human habitations 

 are made by a little taste, time, and means, expended in this 

 way. 



Abroad it is clearly seen that the taste has descended 

 from the palace of the noble and the public parks and gardens 

 of the nation to the hut of the simple peasant; but here, 

 while our institutions have wisely prevented the perpetu- 

 ation of accumulated estates that would speedily find their 

 expression in all the luxury of rural taste, we have not yet 

 risen to that general diffusion of culture and competence 

 which may one day give to the many what in the old world 

 belongs mainly to the favored few. In some localities, where 

 that point has in some measure been arrived at already the 

 result that we anticipate has, in a good degree, already been 

 attained. And there are probably more pretty rural homes 

 within ten miles of Boston owned by those who live in them 

 and have made them, than ever sprang up in so short a 

 space of time in any part of the world. The taste once 

 formed there, it has become contagious, and is diffusing 

 itself among all conditions of men and gradually elevating 

 and making beautiful the whole neighborhood of that popu- 

 lous city. 



In the country at large, however, even now, there cannot 

 be said to be anything like a general taste for gardening or 

 for embellishing the houses of the people. We are too 

 much occupied with making a great deal to have reached 

 that point when a man or a people thinks it wiser to under- 

 stand how to enjoy a little well, than to exhaust both mind 

 and body in getting an indefinite more.* And there are also 



*This penetrating criticism of American life still rests heavily at our 

 door. The fact yet gives deep concern to all those who love America 

 and would prefer to see more spiritual ideals making headway. F. A. \V. 



