52 Literary Notices. 



We can conscientiously bestow unlimited commendation on his ac- 

 quirements as a thorough practical gardener; but judging from the illus- 

 trations accompanying the work, we should be sorry to concede to Mr. 

 Kern the title of Artist. Nor can we satisfactorily reconcile to our mind 

 the apparently appreciative and discriminate tone of his remarks, with the 

 glaring discrepancies contained in the embodiment of his ideas, as ex- 

 hibited in his illustrations. 



For a frontispiece, we have a representation of " Artificinl Rockwork 

 constructed by G. M. Kern, and exhibited at the fall exhibition of the 

 Cincinnati Horticultural Society, 1854," we will describe it as seen in the 

 cut. In the centre of a small circular pond two semi-fish, curly headed, 

 and curly tailed negro twins are blowing what appears to be peppermint 

 candy out of ear trumpets. Immediately behind this, rises something in- 

 tended for a rocky steep "crag piled on crag — " but which has more the 

 appearance of the knobby end of a huge twist loaf, set pyramidically, 

 surmounted by the ruins of the old city hall, and overtopped by Fire Is- 

 land light house ; the structure is garnished on either side by seven "of 

 those small nondescript combinations of pine shavings and green paint, 

 which do duty as trees in children's German toy sets, and a very old 

 broom, set handle downward, completes the edifice. The lake is appro- 

 priately margined by cobble stones, alternated by turnips in a luxuriant 

 state of vegetation ; and perhaps one of the most pleasing features in the 

 picture is the perfect equity with which every object, animate or inani- 

 mate, is balanced. Now this being never seen in nature, we apprehend 

 comes under the head of Art, and if it do, certainly opens a new phase 

 in artistic grouping, of which students will doubtlessly take immediate 

 advantage. 



Again, at page 144, in the cut entitled "Pleasure Ground," we cannot 

 see how the owner could possibly derive any pleasure from the contem- 

 plation of his estate, until he had obliterated those excresences on the 

 face of nature which the designer probably intended for observatory, pic- 

 turesque groups of trees, etc., but which require a more than ordinarily 

 fertile imagination to interpret as anything else than a discontented bell 

 tower, which becoming tired of a metropolitan existence, had wandered 

 forth to spend the summer months in the country. The trees look like a 

 series of obese cabbages, augmented by some choice specimens of (we 

 suppose from their appearance) the recently discovered exotic from which 

 our new street cleaning machines are supplied with brushes. Although 

 the usefulness of these plants cannot be disputed, yet we regard their in- 



