NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



513 



For the New England Farmer. 

 RURAL ART AND TASTE. 



I have this day read the eulogy of Hon. M. P. 

 Wilder, on Mr. A. J. Downing, whose melan- 

 choly fate we all know. I have also noticed to- 

 dayin the New York Christian Inquirer the fol- 

 lowing short but beautiful tribute to his memory. 



"One there perished in whom the nation mourns 

 a benefactor; whose life was a mission of beauty 

 to his countrymen ; a hero of that pacific order 

 and white-handed chivalry, whose enterprise is 

 to create and not to destroy. The sweet influences 

 of Ins tasteful combinations have awakened a new lish agriculturists, by government. He speaks of 



Another peculiar feature in the physiognomy of 

 England, is the number and magnificence of the 

 seats of the nobility and gentry. These superb 

 mansions, many of which are venerable from their 

 antiquity, and all of which are surrounded with 

 fine woods and grounds, give to the country an ap- 

 pearance of age, security and wealth, that we should 

 in vain look for any where else. The farm-houses 

 and cottages have mostly also a substantial, com- 

 fortable look; and evince that taste for rural beau- 

 ty, neatness and cleanliness, that eminently dis- 

 tinguish their occupiers." 



Mr. Lalor proposes an additional loan to Eng- 



)irit in our people, and are giving a new aspect 

 to our landscape. On many a green slope, by the 

 winding river's bank, in the forest glade, on the 

 breezy upland, he has left memorials of himself 

 whicli shall speak to the generation following of 

 his healthy aspirations and his honored name." 



From looking at his character, and considering 

 what great improvements in our rural taste and 

 architecture have been the result of his persever 

 ing genius and love of rural life, and all its highest 

 and holiest accompaniaments, — I am deeply im- 

 pressed with a sense of his great loss. Although 

 he stood high, as a gentleman of elegant taste, yet 

 we trust, the very spirit he awakened, will soon 

 bring up others who will make his place good. I 

 have been reading an English work just published 

 by Jonx Chapman, London. Its author is, John 

 Lalor, and its title "Money and Morals ," and I 

 there find the following passage, descriptive of 

 English landscape, and beautifully expressive of 

 the real value of rural scenery. 



"Our survey of rural attractions is, in fact, an 

 estimate of the most important part of the fixed 

 capital of England. By far the greater part of 

 the beauty which the poets and artists love, has 

 been gradually produced by the efforts of innumer- 

 able laborers. Generation after generation, they 

 have silently passed on, leaving this monument be- 

 hind. The oaks and elms rear their lofty foliage, 

 the hedge rows bloom, the pastures in which the 

 cattle are half hidden, spread out their rich ex- 

 panse, and the fields of golden grain are waving, 

 where swamps and barren wastes alone were seen 

 before the hand of man began to call forth the 

 hidden riches of the soil. This is no dream of the 

 fancy, no imagination of the poets. It is the plain 

 statement of the statition 



"The distinguishing peculiarity in the aspect of 

 the country is, however, the exuberance of its 

 vegetation, and the rich luxuriant appearance of 

 its lower and far more extensive portion. It owes 

 this distinction partly to nature and partly to art. 

 The humility and mildness of the climate, main- 

 tain the fields in a constant state of verdure ; in 

 winter they are seldom covered with snow or 

 blighted by long continued frosts, and in summer, 

 they are rarely withered and parched by droughts. 

 "In this respect, England is as superior to the fin- 

 est countries of continental Europe, — to Italy and 

 Sicily, for example — as she is superior to them, 

 and to every other country, in the amount of labor 

 that has been expended in beautifying, improving 

 and fertilizing her surface. It is no exaggeration 

 to affirm, that thousands upon thousands of mil- 

 lions have been laid out in making England what 

 she now is. In no other nation has the combina- 

 tion of beauty with utility been so much regarded. 



it as the true way to foster the depressed state of 

 agriculture and as more important than the fur- 

 ther extension of mines or work-shops. He says 

 they have two things, capital and the field of em- 

 ployment, "but they stand apart, and whatever 

 political economy may assume, the chasm between 

 them is not one that private interest will bridge 

 over. No, the capital, if left to itself, will go to 

 bruise quartz rock in California, or possibly to con- 

 struct railways in the Celestial Empire, rather 

 than to drain cold clays on the banks of the 

 Thames, or quicken the languor of the vale of Taun- 

 ton." 



An infusion into our great community of the 

 taste which Mr. Downing possessed in such an 

 eminent degree, and which he had done much to 

 impress upon others before his premature death, 

 together with the fostering hand of our government, 

 although they cannot for generations to come give 

 us the antique appearance of our good old mother 

 country, or give us that humidity of climate by 

 which she is perpetually enrobed with living green, 

 can, in a comparatively short period, make us the 

 most productive, and perhaps, in the course of 

 time, the most beautiful country on the face of 

 the globe. Think of the vast expanse and 

 richness of our Mississippi Valley. There we have 

 a substantial foundation, and by its cultivation 

 and embellishment we may possess an aggregate 

 of agricultural wealth — a fixed capital of rural at- 

 tractions, — which has never been equalled, and 

 which, while it affords bread to all, will furnish, 

 by its boundless expanse, and by the inspiration 

 of its rich imagery, intellectual food and refresh- 

 ment to the scholar and the poet, giving a majes- 

 tic power to the production of the former, and a 

 calm and tranquil beauty to those of the latter, 

 down to the latest generations of men. 



By the general diffusion of education, combined 

 with rural taste and the democratic principle of 

 distributing the wealth of our country, we may 

 hope to mingle with our rural beauty a moral as- 

 pect which shall far exceed that of any other coun- 

 try in this or any other age — the aspect of "a 

 home fou all." In England and many of the old 

 countries at this time the condition of agi-icultural 

 laborers, or a large portion of them, is truly deplor- 

 able. They have had "no hope" (or but a faint 

 one) "to rise," and "no fear to fall," for they have 

 been to the very lowest depths of poverty, igno- 

 rance, destitution and wretchedness. A home for 

 all, and all ivorthy of a home. This should be the 

 aim of our institutions to effect, that it maybe the 

 burden of the song of our poets to celebrate. Thus 

 may our moral and rural imagery bring up the He- 

 mans of America to sing not only of the "statelv 

 homes," but of the more homely abodes and 



