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mere place where the excitements of the town were 

 continued in another form, both alike destructive of 

 that repose of the mind so essential to the health of 

 the body. Besides, architectural constructions are too 

 often matters of fashion, as we see in the constant 

 destruction of well built edifices, to make room for a 

 later style of building ; and, although our artificial erec- 

 tions may be copies of the most approved designs, 

 pleasing to the eye in their freshness and novelty, they 

 soon lose these, their chief merits, and in a few years, 

 probably, are removed, to make way for the further con- 

 ceits of some new aspirant for notice. 



While on the other hand nature in its beauty and va- 

 riety never palls upon the senses! never fails to elicit our 

 admiration ; whether displaying its wild grandeur in 

 the vast solitudes of the forest, or throwing its peaceful, 

 clustering shadows, around the domestic altar ; whether 

 bursting the fasts of winter, it opens its buds in spring- 

 time, or yielding to the chilling blasts it scatters its 

 autumn leaves — it conveys in all its phases and through 

 all its changes no emotions which are not in harmony 

 with the highest refinement of the soul. 



When, with the skillful hand of unpeeceived art, its 

 blended beauties are made more harmonious by the cau- 

 tious pruning of trees, the nice distribution of flowers 

 and plants of tender growth, the introduction of the 

 green slope of velvet lawn, and the silver gleam of water, 

 and then through public munificence all this is spread 

 out in the heart of the busy city — at v the feet of the 

 weary toiler — it supplies a void in his existence and sets 

 in operation the purest and most ennobling of external 



