MEMOIR. H 



greatest service to his art. This house is at once simple, 

 massive, and graceful, as becomes the spot. It is the work 

 of an artist, in the finest sense, harmonious with the bare 

 cliff and the sea. But even where his personal services 

 were not required, his books were educating taste, and his 

 influence was visible in hundreds of houses that he had 

 never seen. He edited, during this year, Mrs. London's 

 Gardening for Ladies, which was published by Mr. John 

 Wiley. No man was a more practically useful friend to 

 thousands who did not know him. Yet if, at any time, 

 while his house was full of visitors, business summoned 

 him, as it frequently did, he slipped quietly out of the 

 gate, left the visitors to a care as thoughtful and beau- 

 tiful as his own, and his house was made their home 

 for the time they chose to remain. Downing was in 

 his thirty-seventh year, in the fulness of his fame and 

 power. The difficulties of the failure were gradually dis- 

 appearing behind him like clouds rolling away. He stood 

 in his golden prime, as in his summer garden ; the Fu- 

 ture smiled upon him like the blue Fishkill hills beyond 

 the river. That Future, also, lay beyond the river. 



At the end of June, 1852, I went to pass a few days 

 with him. He held an annual feast of roses with as many 

 friends as he could gather and his house could hold. The 

 days of my visit had all the fresh sweetness of early sum- 

 mer, and the garden and the landscape were fuller than 

 ever of grace and beauty. It was an Arcadian chapter, 

 with the roses and blossoming figs upon the green-house 

 wall, and the music by moonlight, and reading of songs, 

 and tales, and games upon the lawn, under the Warwick 

 vase. Boccaccio's groups in their Fiesole garden, were not 

 gayer ; nor the blithe circle of a summer's day upon Sir 

 Walter Vivian's lawn. Indeed it was precisely in Down- 



