400 Landscape Gardening 



Under those blossoming locust trees were walks that led to 

 the shore, and the moon hanging over Cro' Nest recalled to 

 all loiterers along the bank the loveliest legends of the river. 

 In winter the revel shifted from the lawn to the frozen river. 

 One such gay household is sufficient nucleus for endless 

 enjoyment. From the neighboring West Point, only ten 

 miles distant, came gallant young officers, boating in summer, 

 and skating in winter, to serenade under the locusts, or join 

 the dance upon the lawn. Whatever was young and gay was 

 drawn into the merry maelstrom, and the dark-haired boy 

 from Newburgh, now grown, somehow, to be a gentleman 

 of quiet and polished manner, found himself, even when in 

 the grasp of the scientific coils of Parmentier, Repton, Price, 

 London, Lindley, and the rest, - - or busy with knife, clay, 

 and grafts, - - dreaming of the grange beyond the river, and 

 of the Marianna he had found there. 



Summer lay warm upon the hills and river; the land- 

 scape was yet untouched by the scorching July heats; and 

 on the seventh of June, 1838, - - he being then in his twenty- 

 third year, - - Downing was married to Caroline, eldest 

 daughter of J. P. De Wint, Esq. At this time, he dissolved 

 the business connection with his elder brother, and continued 

 the nursery by himself. There w r ere other changes also. 

 The busy mother of his childhood was busy no longer. She 

 had now been for several years an invalid, unable even to 

 \valk in the garden. She continued to live in the little red 

 cottage which Downing afterwards removed to make way 

 for a green-house. Her sons were men now, and her daughter 

 a woman. The necessity for her own exertion was passed, 

 and her hold upon life was gradually loosened, until she died 

 in 1839. 



Downing now considered himself ready to begin the 

 career for which he had so long been preparing; and very 

 properly his first work was his own house, built in the garden 

 of his father, and only a few rods from the cottage in which 

 he was born. It was a simple house, in an Elizabethan style, 

 by which he designed to prove that a beautiful, and durable, 

 and convenient mansion, could be built as cheaply as a poor 



