208 j Assembly 



fits to one brancli of itiduslry ; and he is no friend of our Repub- 

 lic who would sever the links which connect by identity of inter- 

 est her manufactures, he/- agriculture, and her commerce, as our 

 confederated States are bound together, in eternal union, by the 

 golden chain of mutual advantage. 



Bat it*is time that those remarks were drawn to a close. 



The Fairs of the American Institute, for twenty-five successive 

 years, have marked the annual progress of our national indus- 

 try. While the eye has been gratified, and the mind instructed, 

 by the present Exhibition, one part of it, and that the most beau- 

 tiful of all — the display of flowers and fruits — lias sadly remind- 

 ed us of the absence of oae who, in former years, bore a promi- 

 nent part in your anniversary festivals. The Genius of beauty 

 and taste mourns the untimely loss of her devoted and favored 

 admirer. A thousand homes, whose growing attractions have 

 been called Into existence by his creative skill, are saddened by 

 the reflection that his eyes are closed in death. He entered upon 

 tl^e active labors of life at the time when we were beginning to 

 learn that utility and ornament are not incompatible. To him, 

 more perhaps than to any other man, we are indebted for the ad- 

 vance which has lately been made in public and domestic im- 

 provement, and for tlie growing love of tlie beautiful in nature 

 which is every whe^e manifested ; and to us who cherish ardent 

 aspirations for national independence in all that relates to the 

 T»ants and pursuits of our people, it is not the least of his claims 

 to gratitude that he taught us to love and cherish the flowers of 

 our own valleys and hillsides, aud to prefer the noble trees of 

 our own/orests to the rarest exotics. His heart was truly Amer- 

 ican, and his cherished purpose, which seemed to require for its 

 completion more than the recorded term of human life was to 

 develop the capacities and enhance the beauties of his native 

 iand. The architecture which most truly reveals a nation's 

 taste, and speaks to the popular heart through the affections — the 

 architecture of home — has received from his hands an impression 

 of beauty which it can never lose. On every side we sec the ef- 

 fects of his labors. Cottages, whosesimple yet elegant adornings 

 teach how truly taste may be independent of wealth ; windows 



