MILTON P. BRAMAN'S ADDRESS. 551 



gratify their inclinations in costly equipages, works of art, and 

 magnificent architecture. There is no objection to such ex- 

 penditure, when properly directed and bounded by reasonable 

 limits. When men of great means divert a portion of their re- 

 sources to the patronage of the arts of statuary and painting^ 

 and other products of genius and taste, they are devoting 

 wealth to some of its noblest uses. They are counteracting the 

 tendency which a close application to commercial occupations 

 has to foster contracted and sordid propensities. They are im- 

 parting refinement and elevation to their own feelings, and con- 

 tributing to diffuse through a community sufficiently devoted 

 to the love of gain, a healthful and liberalizing influence. But 

 the taste for fine arts and magnificent display may become ex- 

 cessive and misdirected. 



If some men of wealth, who now expend a hundred thou- 

 sand dollars on the erection and fitting up of a dwelling, would 

 limit the outlay to fifty thousand, and reserve the remaining 

 half to purchase some unproductive and waste land, whose 

 tillage is too difficult and costly for persons of small means to 

 undertake, on which to gratify their taste, and cover it with 

 the beauty of a luxm'iant and ornamental vegetation, they 

 would contribute to the promotion of agricultural improve- 

 ment, and at the same time indulge a taste as much nobler than 

 that which they gratify now, as the beauties of nature tran- 

 scend those of human device. Why is not a fine landscape as 

 worthy an object of admiration as the painting which exhibits 

 its imitation to the eye ? And why has not the divine skill 

 which exhibits its wonders in the exquisite structure of plants, 

 and the ornaments with which it gilds the flowers of the field, 

 and the rich forms and foliage with which it invests the trees, 

 as high claims to the homage of taste, and the expenditure of 

 resources, as the art which hews the rock into the resemblance 

 of the human form, but can confer no life to utter its expres- 

 sion through the rigid features ? To a person whose suscepti- 

 bilities of gratification are directed by right principles, the pro- 

 cess by which a sterile and uninviting surface is converted into 

 a rich and waving field, which causes the wilderness to blos- 

 som, and turns the foul morass into a smooth and verdant lawn, 



