1854. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



475 



Where the grape is cultivated in many places, the 

 only manure used year after year is leaves and 

 trimmings of the vines, carefully placed around 

 the roots, and slighty covered to promote their 

 decay. 



If we place our corn cobs in a proper state of 

 decay, upon our corn ground, we may perhaps 

 gain more in the end, than we should to have] 

 them ground into meal, — or certainly than we 

 should to throw them at random into the compost 

 heap, to be applied without reference to a future 

 crop. — American News. 



For the New En!jlnnd Farmer. 



THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL. 



BY R. MORRIS COPELAND. 



The art of landscape gardening is not only re- 

 ducible to principles, but these principles, are sim- 

 ilar to those which exist in each of the fine arts, 

 and if the practice and tiie rules can be made to 

 agree, the whole cultivated world may consider 

 landscape gardening a fine art. 



My aim is not to condemn any practice or pro- 

 fessors, upon unseen and unknown dicta and res- 

 olutions, but first to establish certain well defined 

 principles, and to judge all by them. 



But before pursuing this any further in the di- 

 rect line, it seems not unworthy the subject to 

 turn a little aside, and notice both some of the 

 standard works upon Landscape Gardening, and 

 what they teach. 



My attention was drawn to this point by an ar- 

 ticle in tlie January number of Hovcy''s Maga- 

 zine, for 1853, written by one who professes to 

 be a practical inprover. Many of the ideas con- 

 tained in it are noticeable, but first let us exam- 

 ine the following paragraph, and the conclusions 

 to which it leads : 



He is speaking of American books and works in 

 this art, and says : "Notwithstanding what has 

 been published on the subject, not a syllable has 

 been written that had not been long ago advanced 

 in English works ; nor can we discover anything 

 in the writings of American authors on Landscape 

 Gardening, calculated to adapt the works of Eu- 

 ropean writers to the wants of the numerous resi- 

 dences where this adaptation is much required." 



A little back of this quotation, on the same 

 page, the writer advances tlie idea that the style 

 of improvement in the house should govern that 

 of the grounds, and that this is the commonly ad- 

 mitted principle abroad. lie then says, " to be 

 guided here by such principles, sliade of Evelyn, 

 what a preposterous idea. America has not yet, 

 we presume, produced the genius to strike out a 

 style applicable to all, or, indeed, exclusively to 

 any of the innumerable oddities that are scattered 

 over the face of the country." 



A careless reading of the page here referred to 

 would certainly tend to give the reader a very 

 wrong impression of the writer's meaning ; he 

 does not Ijolieve that any American has originated 

 any style applicable to the numerous oddities, and 

 yet he speaks of the P]nglish style being applicable 

 to them exactly ; of course he did not mean us to 

 understand that English landscape Gardening 

 was a collection of the numerous oddities, and 

 yet it must l)e, since it is exactly suited to our 

 own. However, these paragraphs are not quoted 

 to note their inconsistencies, but rather for the 



sake of the principles involved in them. It is very 

 true, indeed, thaf in the highest principles of the 

 art nothing has been originated here. Sir Uve- 

 dale Price, Gilpin, Repton, Loudon, and a few 

 others, have covered the whole ground, and hive 

 left almost nothing to be said or discovered in the 

 direction they went, but their writings are exceed- 

 ingly voluminous and tedious to read. Price, 

 Gilpin and Knight have set forth the principles, 

 have raised and purified the theory, and Price par- 

 ticularly has given the theory and essence of 

 Landscape Gardening so thorough a sifting as to 

 leave little for his successors to do but to reiter- 

 ate. The others referred to were either the prac- 

 ti-sers of Price '-s theories (Ripton), or the com- 

 pilers of the practice of their day, and of that and 

 of all preceding times (Loudon). Downing has 

 very ably digested out of this mass all that is 

 worth having to the general reader : he invented 

 nothing, got up no new ideas or practices, but 

 was a very able and skilful compiler ; and inas- 

 much as he separated the most of the wheat from 

 the chaff, and presented it in its winnowed form 

 to the reader, he deserves quite as much credit as 

 the original writer. 



But had Downing lived longer, — had he had 

 time to practice and develop many of his theories 

 (borrowed and digested), he would doubtless have 

 produced original matter worthy of the subject. 

 As it is, he must ever stand at the head of the 

 i-anks, and, as the pioneer of a good cause, de- 

 serves more praise even than he already has. 



But in reality, it is very questionable if Down- 

 ing or Mr. Allen, of Buffalo, the editor of Smith's 

 Parks and Pleasure Grounds, or any other per- 

 sons who have re-published English works, have 

 not made a very vital mistake, not in the good or 

 bad compiling of English authors, but in having 

 had anything to do with them at all. 



The gentleman who has ]>een quoted speaks of 

 the English works as well adapted to the present 

 American wants. 



This position is the one towards which we have 

 been tending : it is not true that English loorks 

 are adapted to American wants, but just theco7itra- 

 ry. Any farther than that general reading im- 

 proves the mind, and that a knowledge of the va- 

 rious methods of performing similar work in dif- 

 ferent parts of the world, improves the workman, 

 they are almost valueless. 



One of them (Price) ought to be a text-book, 

 but that one is never read or quoted as a practical 

 guide. Price's Picturesque gives the careful stu- 

 dent a very thorough idei of the principles of 

 beauty — of the principles to guide liis action ; 

 teaches him the difference between the beautiful 

 and the picturesque; shows him how to appeal to 

 the refined mind in landscapes : and more than 

 all, going as it does to the root of the matter — 

 analyzing the mind to its elements, and the prin- 

 ciples of beauty to theirs — shjws how they may 

 mutually fit and benefit each other. .This is all 

 we want ; let him who would become an artist of 

 any kind, learn, not the handling, mechanism, or 

 coloring of his teacher, but rather the spirit that 

 guides him. It is never the rule of man's action 

 so much as the mind within. 



To this bad habit of copying results rather than 

 principles, is to be attributed the bad architecture 

 of the present day. Architects in designing 

 buildings, assume some stylo, and then copy its 



