THE 



AMERICAN 



GARDENER'S MAGAZINE 



AUGUST, 1836. 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



Art. I. Remarks on the Fitness of the different Styles of 

 .Architecture for the Construction of Country Residences, and 

 on the Employment of Vases in Garden Scenery. By A. J. 

 Downing, Botanic Garden and Nursery, Newburgh, N. Y. 



It is in the highest degree gratifying to witness the rapid im- 

 provement in the taste for building, which is extending itself 

 throughout the country. Here, where from the scarcity of good 

 architects to direct the public taste, that taste must be formed 

 and controlled, in a great measure, by the landed proprietors 

 themselves, it reflects the more credit upon its possessors. 

 From the buildings of a country, as they exhibit, in their exter- 

 nal appearance and internal arrangement, the evidences of com- 

 fort, convenience, elegance of proportion, and beauty of detail, 

 the traveller indeed may form a very just opinion of the charac- 

 ter of its inhabitants ; — he can distinguish, in different countries, 

 the general march of civihzation, exhibited in the wants of those 

 inhabitants, dependant upon the degrees of intelligence and cul- 

 tivation of which they may be possessed — from a savage state 

 of barbarism, when man subsists by hunting, and constructs for 

 himself a rude hut of bark or logs, to those refined stages of 

 society, in which the luxury of man has caused him to expend 

 milhons in the erection of a single palace. 



Judging, in this manner, of the state of a population by their 

 apparent wants, in the domestic and social relations, and the 

 perfection of the art by which they satisfy those wants — we 

 conceive that, in the Northern and Middle States, the stranger 

 must derive a highly favorable impression from observations of 

 this nature. The great number of tasteful villas, neat farm- 



voL. II. — NO. vni. 36 



