MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE 



guided direction — will consume moneys. The 

 engrossing tastes of the city are not without a 

 capability in this direction; but one or two 

 good sand-banks, a small ledge, a plantation, 

 and artificial ponds— in connection with a 

 rural taste which is ambitious without being 

 experienced, will I think absorb money as 

 easily as any outlets of the metropolis. 



I should strongly counsel Mr. Urban, or 

 any other, who feels this inclination possess- 

 ing him, thoroughly to mature his plans before 

 beginning; there is no rural wasting so mon- 

 strous as the waste of building walls and re- 

 moving them, or of excavating valleys and the 

 next summer filling them up. A few judicious 

 hints at the beginning, based on good sense 

 and taste combined, may work the saving of 

 thousands. I am inclined to think that the 

 pleasant scenes of the Central Park are to be 

 credited (or charged) with a great deal of 

 riotous or ineffective private expenditure: 

 those who have gleaned all their knowledge 

 of landscape-gardening from that out-of-door 

 school — a very charming one in many of its 

 features — have left out of consideration the 

 fact, that public expenditure knows no econo- 

 mies, and an army of lazy laborers, dragging 

 at the bosom of the public treasury, may keep 



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