MEMOIR. XIX 



red house, and his priming-knife and sharp eye in the 

 nursery and garden, he was learning, adapting, and tri- 

 umphing, and also, doubtless, dreaming and resolving. 

 If any stranger wishing to purchase trees at the nursery 

 of the Messrs. Downing, in Newburgh, had visited that 

 pleasant town, and transacted business with the younger 

 partner, he would have been perplexed to understand why 

 the younger partner with his large knowledge, his remark- 

 able power of combination, his fine taste, his rich cultiva- 

 tion, his singular force and precision of expression, his evi- 

 dent mastery of his profession, was not a recognized 

 authority in it, and why he had never been heard of. For 

 it was remarkable in Downing, to the end, that he always 

 attracted attention and excited speculation. The boy of 

 the Montgomery Academy carried that slightly defiant 

 head into the arena of life, and seemed always too much a 

 critical observer not to challenge wonder, sometimes, even, 

 to excite distrust. That was the eye which in the vege- 

 table world had scanned the law through the appearance, 

 and followed through the landscape the elusive line of 

 beauty. It was a full, firm, serious eye. He did not 

 smile with his eyes as many do, but they held you as in a 

 grasp, looking from under their cover of dark brows. 



The young man, now twenty years old or more, and 

 hard at work, began to visit the noble estates upon the 

 banks of the Hudson, to extend his experience, and confirm 

 his nascent theories of art in landscape-gardening. Study- 

 ing in the red cottage, and working in the nursery upon 

 the Newburgh highlands, he had early seen that in a new, 

 and unworked, and quite boundless country, with every 

 variety of kindly climate and available soil, where fortunes 

 arose in a night, an opportunity was offered to Art, of 

 achieving a new and characteristic triumph. To touch 



