184 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



tnes. We incline with him to the opinion that among the things requisite t& 

 the improvement of the arts, and a high degree of civilization, are a set of ele- 

 gant homes, ready and sumptuously furnished, with luxurious stores and appli- 

 ances of all kinds, and above all, as he says, complete social enginery — in other 

 words, strong laws, and a strong and honest disposition of executive power, to 

 enforce them, to give the most^ unquestionable security to life and property. 



We hold nothing to be more pernicious than a jealousy of the poor toward the 

 rich, whose fortunes, acquired generally in this country by industry, give those poor 

 employment; nor anymore worthy to be regarded in the light of mad dogs, than 

 demagogues who would appeal to or excite their animosity against those Avhose 

 capital creates demand for their labor. 



But truly we hardly know how Roswell House should have drawn from our 

 pen such a train of reflection, for we meant only to give a picture of an impos- 

 ing, capacious, and hospitable mansion, and to recommend the grounds to general 

 imitation. And why? Because they combine what every where indicates good 

 and salutary taste, and one which at once shows and promotes the best sort of 

 affections — to wit, the love of beautiful trees, and choice fruits, and various flow- 

 ers — a taste which has been almost common to good and great men from the 

 days of Virgil and of Spenser to the present. 



See, in the following lines from the latter, how, better even than some prac- 

 tical farmers, he understood both the habitation and uses of many of our forest 

 trees : 



"And forth they pasge with pleasure forward led, 

 Joying to hear the birds swecte harmony, 

 Which therein shrouded from the tempests drcd. 

 Seemed in their song to scorn the cruel sky ; 

 Much can they praise the trees so straight and high : 

 The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall, 

 The vineprop Elm, the Poplar never dry, 

 The builder Oak, sole king of forests all, 

 The Asper, good for staves, the Cypress, funeral. 



" The Laurel, meed of mighty conquerors 



And poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still, 

 The VVillovi', wornc of forlorne paramours. 

 The Eugh, obedient to the bender's will, 

 The Birch for shafts, the Sallow for the mill, 

 The Myrre sweet bleeding of the bitter wound, 



The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill. 

 The fruitful Olive, and the Platane round. 

 The carver Holme, the Maple sildom inward sound." 



The gentle reader will excuse only two more lines, and these from his own 



the great poet of Agriculture, Virgil: 



•' Fraxinus in sylvis pulcherrima, pinus in hortis, 

 Populus in fluviis, abics in montibus altis." 



Connected with Roswell House are 95 acres of land, 62 of which are included 

 in one lot, surrounded by a stone wall, and Madura hedge, or board fence, with 

 no division fences. 



It would not be easy to conceive a ruder and more unmanageable piece of 

 orround than that was which is now occupied by this superb mansion, and the 

 ornamental and fruit trees that adorn and enrich it. A black alder swamp, of 

 five acres of mud and quick-sand, has given way to two large ponds or miniature 

 lakes, where swans, which, according to an old notion, " cannot hatch without a 

 cracke of thunder," are ever sporting their graceful iorms. 



Between these two ponds there is a fall of five feet, of which Mr. C. took ad- 

 vantage, by raising a dam, and placing a wheel of eight feet diameter, to put in 

 motion, by the How of the upper pond, a forciug-puinp, supplied not from the 



(37(i) 



