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thousands who did not know him. Yet if, at any lime, 

 while his house was full of visitors, business summoned him, 

 as it frequently did, he slipped quietly out of the gate, left 

 the visitors to a care as thoughtful and beautiful as his own, 

 and his house was made their home for the lime they chose 

 to remain. Downing was in his thirty-seventh year, in the 

 fulness of his fame and power. The difficulties of the failure 

 were gradually disappearing behind him like clouds rolling 

 away. He stood in his golden prime, as in his summer gar- 

 den; the Future smiled upon him like the blue Fishkill hills 

 beyond the river. That Future, also, lay beyond the river. 



At the end of June, 1852, I went to pass a few days with 

 him. He held an annual feast of roses with as many friends 

 as he could gather and his house could hold. The days of 

 my visit had all the fresh sweetness of early summer, and 

 the garden and the landscape were fuller than ever of grace 

 and beauty. It was an Arcadian chapter, with the roses and 

 blossoming figs upon the green-house wall, and the music 

 by moonlight, and reading of songs, and tales, and games 

 upon the lawn, under the Warwick vase. Boccaccio's groups 

 in their Fiesole garden, were not gayer; nor the blithe circle 

 of a summer's day upon Sir Walter Vivian's lawn. Indeed 

 it was precisely in Downing's garden that the poetry of such 

 old traditions became fact - - or rather the fact was lifted 

 into that old poetry. He had achieved in it the beauty of an 

 extreme civilization, without losing the natural, healthy 

 vigor of his country and time. 



One evening - - the moon was full - - we crossed in a row- 

 boat to the Fishkill shore, and floated upon the gleaming 

 river under the black banks of foliage to a quaint old country 

 house, in whose small library the Society of the Cincinnati 

 was formed, at the close of the Revolution, and in whose 

 rooms a pleasant party was gathered that summer evening. 

 The doors and windows were open . We stood in the rooms 

 or loitered upon the piazza, looking into the unspeakable 

 beauty of the night. A lady was pointed out to me as the 

 heroine of a romantic history- -a handsome woman, with 

 the traces of hard experience in her face, standing in that 



