MEMOIR. xxiii 



mouy at* easily achieved by taste as discord by vulgarity. 

 There was no painful conformity, no rigid monotony , 

 there wa3 i^otbiag finical nor foppish in this elegance it 

 was the necessary result of knowledge and skill. While 

 the house was building, he lived with his wife at her 

 father's. He personally superintended the work, which 

 went briskly forward. From the foot of the Fishkill hills 

 beyond the river, other eyes superintended it, also, scan- 

 ning, with a telescope, the Newburgh garden and growing 

 house ; and, possibly, from some lude telegraph, as a white 

 cloth upon a tree, or a blot of black paint upon a smooth 

 board, Hero knew whether at evening to expect her Le- 

 ander. 



The house was at length finished. A graceful and 

 beautiful building stood in the garden, higher and hand- 

 somer than the little red cottage a very pregnant symbol 

 to any poet who should chance that way and hear the 

 history of the architect. 



Once fairly established in his house, it became the seat 

 of the most gracious hospitality, and was a beautiful illus- 

 tration of that " rural home " upon whose influence Down- 

 ing counted so largely for the education and intelligent 

 patriotism of his countrymen. His personal exertions 

 were unremitting. He had been for some time projecting 

 a work upon his favorite art of Landscape Gardening, and 

 presently began to throw it into form. His time for liter- 

 ary labor was necessarily limited by his superintendence of 

 the nursery. But the book was at length completed, and 

 in the year 1841, the Author being then twenty-six years 

 old, Messrs. Wiley & Putnam published in New- York and 

 London, "A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of 

 Landscape Gardening, adapted to North America, with a 

 view to the Improvement of Country Kesidences. With 



