436 Landscape Gardening 



ing's death. And then a few years later another most 

 fortunate juncture occurred when Vaux in his turn became 

 professionally associated with the late Frederick Law 

 Olmsted. With the long and notable career of Olmsted 

 landscape architecture became an established and recognized 

 profession, and one in which the highest ideals were so firmly 

 fixed as never again to be lost or obscured. This triple 

 association of Downing, Vaux and Olmsted must ever form 

 the great opening chapter in the history of the landscape 

 profession in America. 



Finally, and most of all, as we remember Andrew Jackson 

 Downing we come to realize that he was a man of rare and 

 extraordinary gifts, - - a genius in the large and good mean- 

 ing of the word. Any man beginning life in a new country, 

 in poverty, almost without education, and \vith the handi- 

 cap of physical weakness, who before the age of thirty-seven 

 years reaches a position of commanding importance in four 

 separate fields, such as pomology, architecture, landscape 

 gardening and literature, and who in each field leaves work 

 to last a century, - - such a man is more than a genius, he is 

 a prodigy. His powers obviously and altogether transcend 

 those of ordinary men. 



Yet in Downing these prodigous faculties were so mixed 

 and tempered with warm human qualities as to be largely 

 lost to sight. We have been told that in his associations 

 with most men he was reserved, even cold; but in the writ- 

 ings through which we chiefly know him he is always frank 

 and friendly, - - the most cordial and genial of companions. 

 \\'e have learned so much to love the memory of the man 

 as to forget the sum total of his genius. And to-day as we 

 revisit the scenes he loved so well and bless ourselves with 

 the inspiration of his memory, and try again to measure 

 the bequest of his life to us, we need not let our admiration 

 for his work in pomology, or literature or landscape garden- 

 ing stint our thought of his larger genius; nor need we dwell 

 so long upon his superhuman genius as to lose our hold 

 upon the man of flesh and blood who still commands the love 

 and admiration of our common human hearts. 



