MEMOIR. 



Biony as easily achieved by taste as discord by vulgarity. 

 There Was no paii),ful'. conformity, no rigid monotony ; 

 there was nothing finical nor foppish in this elegance — ^it 

 was the necessary resjilf: of knowledge .and skill.- While 

 ithei house, was building, he lived with hi& wife at. her 

 father's. He- personally superintended the wOrk, which 

 went briskly forward. From the foot of the FishMU hills 

 .beyond the- river, bther eyes superintended it, also, scan- 

 ning, with a telescope, the Newburgh garden and growing 

 house ;' and, possiblyj.from some jude telegraph, as a white 

 cld& upon a tree, or a blot "of black pgint upon a smooth 

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

 ander. - - 



,,TJie house^ was at- length finished. A graceful and 

 beautiful building stodd in the garden, higher and hand- 

 somer than the little red c6ttage-4-a very pregnant symbol 

 to', any poet who should .chance - that way 3,nd hear the 

 history of the architect. 



Once fairly estabhshedin his house, it became the seat 

 of the most gracious hospitality, an^'wap a beautiful illus- 

 tration of that " rural honie^' upon whose iafluence Down- 

 ing counted so largely for the education and intelligent 

 p&triotism of his countrymen. His personal, exertions 

 were unremitting. He had been for some time projecting 

 a work Upon his favorite art of L3,ndscape Grardenihg, and 

 presently' began to throw it into form. Hi^ time for liter- , 

 ' afy labor was necessarily limited by his superintendence of 

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

 in the year 1841 j the Author being then twentyTsix years 

 old, Messrs. Wi^^J & Putnam published in New- York and 

 London, "A Treatise on .the Theory and Practice of 

 Landscape Grardening, adapted, to North America, with a 

 view to the improvement^df Oountry Eesidences. With 



