MR. Oliver's address. 41 



faculties given us bj' our Maker, to be cultivated by us for our 

 own happiness, and the more we cultivate the innocent and 

 refined ones, the happier and the better we shall be. Home, 

 with all its concomitants of wife, children, books, music, flow- 

 ers, and social intercourse, is, and ought to he, the dearest spot 

 of all the earth. You may make it, or mar it. Adorn, then, 

 your homes, within and without, and home shall adorn and 

 comfort you. Your children will be more attached to it, and 

 less likely to leave it for Californias or Far- Wests, and more 

 likely to settle in its neighborhood, and to build other and 

 tasteful abodes. Let me commend to you, in this connection, 

 the work on " Country Houses," by the late lamented Down- 

 ing, who perished in the '• Henry Clay," to the deep sorrow 

 of every admirer of the beautiful in architecture, and in gar- 

 dening, and who had done so much for the diff'usion of an im- 

 proved taste in all that relates to rural afiairs. There perish- 

 ed the tasteful student of nature, whose life has been to his 

 countrymen, a mission of beauty ; whose ripe judgment, and 

 vivid imagination, and loving insight into the sweet tender 

 secrets of mother-earth, have been bodied forth in artistic com- 

 binations and suggestions, that have awakened a new spirit of 

 taste in the community, and made many a glorious landscape 

 a monument of beauty to his loved and honored name. 



His books will teach you, how easily you may combine the 

 beautiful with the good, the useful with the elegant. 



The whole country suffers when such men as Downing and 

 Norton are taken away. The latter gentleman was appointed, 

 a few years since, to a new Professorship in Yale College, that 

 of "Chemistry applied to Agriculture and the Phenomena of 

 vegetable and animal life." Though young, he was one of 

 the highest ornaments of learning, and gave assurance that 

 could not fail, that if spared, his influence and his teachings 

 would prove of the highest value to the agricultural interest. 

 Each was invaluable in his vocation, the one leading the way 

 and directing to the useful, and the other showing how to 

 unite ornament and beauty to utflity. 



Nor shall your dwelling only, feel the good effiects'of the 



improvement in education and taste, for which I have pleaded. 

 6 



