172 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



dwellings of the rich. There is something in the condition 

 of the poor that awakens our sympathies, while in that of 

 the wealthy there is more to excite our envy. As envy is a 

 disagreeable emotion, any object that causes it is proportion- 

 ally disagreeable. Hence anything whatever in a work of 

 art which is calculated to excite this emotion, except perhaps 

 in the breast of a rival artist, is an offence against good taste. 

 This passion is not awakened by the unostentatious evidences 

 of wealth. If the mansions of weakhy men were constructed 

 in such a manner as to wear only the expression of qualities 

 agreeable to our ideas of Avhat is generous and noble in the 

 human character, no envy would be aroused. The pride of 

 the owner would not enter into our thoughts, and we should 

 look on his possessions with a pleasing satisfaction, and with 

 admiration of his taste and character. 



Among those accompaniments of a dwelling that affect the 

 mind of the beholder with disagreeable emotions, I would 

 name all those decorations which are introduced for the man- 

 ifest purpose of advertising the cost of the building. Such 

 are a profusion of external ornaments, and their counterfeits, 

 the object of which is to excite vulgar admiration. It is 

 remarkable that those persons who take the most pains, by 

 means of such puerilities, to attract the admiration of the 

 crowd, are the very ones who most pompously set themselves 

 above the crowd. The man of generous mind who despises 

 vulgar admiration, and strives to please the taste only of the 

 intelligent and refined, is satisfied with the consciousness of 

 his own superiority, without making a vain parade of it. No 

 man spends money on meretricious ornaments except with his 

 heart set upon winning the plaudits of the vulgar. That sort 

 of aristocracy is truly contemptible which affects to despise 

 the very classes whose applauses it seeks. The true aristos 

 is one who, possessing an elevated moral and intellectual char- 

 acter, seeks the approbation of those intelligent persons only 

 whom he considers his equals, and who is endowed with a 

 generous and unostentatious contempt of the low and the 

 vicious. 



It is idle to question the right of any man to choose his 



