402 Landscape Gardening 



the Author being then twenty-six years old, Messrs. Wiley 

 & Putnam published in Xew York and London, "A Treatise 

 on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening adapted 

 to North America, with a view to the Improvement of 

 Country Residences. With Remarks on Rural Architecture. 

 By A. J. Downing." The most concise and comprehensive 

 definition of Landscape Gardening that occurs in his works, 

 is to be found in the essay, "Hints on Landscape Gardening." 

 "It is an art," he says, "which selects from natural materials 

 that abound in any country its best sylvan features, and by 

 giving them a better opportunity than they could otherwise 

 obtain, brings about a higher beauty of development and 

 more perfect expression than nature herself offers." Trie 

 preface of the book is quite without pretence. 'The love 

 of country," says our author, with a gravity that overtops 

 his years, "is inseparably connected with the love of home. 

 Whatever, therefore, leads man to assemble the comforts and 

 elegancies of life around his habitation, tends to increase 

 local attachments, and render domestic life more delightful; 

 thus, not only augmenting his own enjoyment, but strength- 

 ening his patriotism, and making him a better citizen. And 

 there is no employment or recreation which affords the mind 

 greater or more permanent satisfaction than that of culti- 

 vating the earth and adorning our own property. 'God 

 Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the parent 

 of human pleasures,' says Lord Bacon. And as the first 

 man was shut out from the garden, in the cultivation of 

 which no alloy was mixed with his happiness, the desire to 

 return to it seems to be implanted by nature, more or less 

 strongly, in every heart." 



This book passed to instant popularity, and became a 

 classic, invaluable to the thousands in every part of the 

 country who were waiting for the master-word which should 

 tell them what to do to make their homes as beautiful as 

 they wished. Its fine scholarship in the literature and his- 

 tory of rural art; its singular dexterity in stating the great 

 principles of taste, and their application to actual circum- 

 stances, with a clearness that satisfied the dullest mind; its 



