XX1J MEMOIR. 



scape was yet untouched by the scorching July heats ; 

 and on the seventh of June, 1838, he being then in his 

 twenty-third year, Downing was married to Caroline, 

 eldest daughter of J. P. De Wint, Esq. At this time, 

 he dissolved the business connection with his elder brother, 

 and continued the nursery by himself. There were other 

 changes also. The busy mother of his childhood was busy 

 no longer. She had now been for several years an invalid, 

 unable even to walk in the garden. She continued to live 

 in the little red cottage which Downing afterwards re- 

 moved to make way for a green-house. Her sons were 

 men now, and her daughter a woman. The necessity for 

 her own exertion was passed, and her hold upon Hie was 

 gradually loosened, until she died in 1839. 



Downing now considered himself ready to begin the 

 career for which he had so long been preparing ; and very 

 properly his first work was his own house, built in the gar- 

 den of his father, and only a few rods from the cottage 

 in which he was born. It was a simple house, in an Eliz- 

 abethan style, by which he designed to prove that a beau- 

 tiful, and durable, and convenient mansion, could be built 

 as cheaply as a poor and tasteless temple, which seemed to 

 be, at that time, the highest American conception of a 

 fine residence. In this design he entirely succeeded. His 

 house, which did not, however, satisfy his maturer eye, 

 was externally very simple, but extremely elegant ; indeed, 

 its chief impression was that of elegance. Internally it 

 was spacious and convenient, very gracefully proportioned 

 and finished, and marked every where by the same spirit. 

 Wherever the eye fell, it detected that a wiser eye had 

 been before it. All the forms and colors, the style of the 

 furniture, the frames of the mirrors and pictures, the pat- 

 terns of the carpets, were harmonious, and it was a har- 



