458 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



gardens, and is still engaged in good works. The development in 

 such societies of the horticultural interest led, in the first half of 

 the nineteenth century, to the formation in several States of 

 horticultural societies that gave much more attention to these 

 objects and occasional attention to public reservations. 



During and just after the same period, a number of horticul- 

 tural magazines came into beintr under the direction of such men 

 as A. J. Downing, Thomas Meehan, and C. M. Hovey, and some 

 literary magazines, especially Putnam's, gave space to the writers 

 on village improvement. Then came the group of writers repre- 

 sented by Bryant and Emerson, whose keen insight into and 

 close sympathy with nature was transmitted to so many of their 

 readers, and, above all, Thoreau, the Gilbert White of America, 

 with a broader point of view, whose writings did not, how- 

 ever, receive their full recognition until much later. 



It is very significant that two weH-marked phases of the "im- 

 provement of towns and cities" should have developed at almost 

 the same time. First, in a studied plan of public grounds, at 

 Washington in 1851, to be followed by the acquirement of a 

 public park and the appointment of a Park Commission in New 

 York in 1857, and second, by the organization of the first village 

 improvement society by Miss Mary G. Hopkins, at Stockbridge, 

 Mass., in 1853. Equally significant as indicating the impetus 

 the movement is to attain, was the action of the national Gov- 

 ernment a quarter century later in acquiring great reservations, 

 first, like the Yellowstone Park, for their natural beauty, then, 

 later, as forest reservations for economic reasons, and such bat- 

 tlegrounds as that of Gettysburg, on account of their historical 

 associations. 



The first powerful impetus to village improvement was given 

 by B. G. Northrup, Secretary of the Connecticut State Board of 

 Education, who, in his report of 1869, wrote upon "How to 

 Beautify and Build up Our Country Towns." an article which 

 he states was received with ridicule. He thereafter for years 

 wrote much, lectured often, and before 1880 had organized not 

 less than one hundred societies in the New England and Middle 

 States. His writings were published by the daily papers, and 

 the New York Tribune, republished and offered for sale, in 1891, 

 at three dollars per hundred, his "Rural Improvement Associa- 



