AN EMPEROR'S IDEA. 67 



first fruits. Beautiful lands are made still more charming 

 and are more sought when well cultivated ; lands that 

 are not by nature beautiful become more desirable for 

 their own citizens, more attractive to strangers, when 

 beautified by the hand of man. The necessity of plant- 

 ing and improving is excited and increased by the cul- 

 ture of imagination in the child. The sense of beauty, 

 planted in a whole people, is an inestimable capital. 



The meritorious idea of founding societies for the 

 beautifying of the land can only be practicable when 

 the children in the schools are won to the beauty of 

 nature. A rural people that has grown up in school 

 gardens will no longer suffer the disfigurement of offal 

 in the streets of a village.* 



The Emperor Joseph II. 's idea of planting streets 

 and squares with trees is at last, one hundred years 

 after his death, likely to be realized. How beautiful 

 the villages will be thus ornamented, and what money 

 will flow in good years into the village treasuries ! 

 When the village streets, squares and lanes are enlivened 

 by the beauty of fruit trees, the church-yards will be 

 planted for sanitary and beautifying purposes ! 



The village streets which are to contain trees must 

 of necessity be broad ; but many walls and fences, many 

 railings and hedges in villages can be covered and orna- 

 mented with grape vines and trellis fruit, which will 

 take up little room, and bring in much money. 



ITS SOCIAL AND CLIMATIC INFLUENCES. 



Austria should be ashamed of the fact that many coun- 



* I spare the minute description, and am happy to recognize the fact that no 

 such villages exist in any part of America with which I am acquainted, but they 

 are apparently worse in Austria than in Germany, where no American can fail to 

 be shocked at the spectacles he frequently meets with. TR. 



