Ediioriai Mi-^fccllan > 



so unsparingly favored this sunny land. We prcviouiiy looked upon the 

 landscape, and the generous soil, and the propitious sky, with an unap- 

 preciatiog spirit, which reduced these gifts to a certain something we 

 were used to, and therefore had a natural right to expect, without enter- 

 taining a rapture, or evincing pleasure in their realization. Mr. Dowx- 

 ing's eifoits also tended greatly to interlace the commercial relations o^ 

 metropolis and country, and break down that disparity and contempi; 

 which formerly existed for everything that redoled of the suburbs. His 

 soul, like a crystal chalice, drank in the balmy air, the sunny life^ 

 and delicious clime, until his entire nature became imbued with its frag- 

 rant incense. He lived serenely and tranquilly, delighting thousands 

 with his eloquent discoursing, and feeding his heart with the beautiful 

 things which one by one he gathered to his little court on the Hudson, 

 Much winged forth from this abode that has in an eminent degree gene- 

 alized our hearts, and subdued that malevolence and acrimony which per- 

 vades so unlimitedly our natures. B.it alas, for those who best loved him, 

 he nassed away, meteor-like, blinding ns for the nonce by his brilliant 

 abilities and artistic taste. He has passed away, but is still with us in 

 the cot, in the more ambitious villa; in the pallalial residence, there are 

 still cherished vestiges of Downing. His soul has shed the exuvse of 

 clay; his mortal tenement we have not, but his spirit still hovers on the 

 banks of the Hudson, where he has infused evidences of his surpassing 

 quality, and which will engender lively emotions of pleasant things long 

 after his generation shall be gathered to the great parent. He has left a 

 train of conrruscations behind him which will out-glitter the lesser lights 

 whose pigmy scintillations feebly gleam out from their lucre-smeared ef- 

 forts. There are those who having caught a little of the halo of Mr. 

 Downing's greatness, have with a knavish assurance contrived to niche 

 themselves on the pedestal of public opinion, in juxtaposition to that of 

 the great departed. These men are as completely the slaves of gigantic 

 and 2:)suedo constructed conceits, as Faust was of Mephistophiles. So 

 gangrened with their self-estimated flavor — arising from the profundity of 

 their ignorance— that the Horticultural community have perforce been 

 surfeited with puerilities until their more delicate perceptions are in dan- 

 ger of perversion. These individuals are the very antipodes of humbug 

 or hypocricy; being incited to effort by a pretension which subsequently 

 gets so mixed up with egotism, that they become actual believers in what 

 they previously only pretended. In making these strictures we wish to 

 be distinctly understood, as not having any of this emulous hungering af- 

 ter positions occupied by those whose real greatness surpassed our sense 



