A JAUNT IN OHIO.-NO. 2. 
83 
around them. The Edinburgh and Northern, 
the Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the Caledonia 
lines are conspicuous for want of taste in this 
respect, while innumerable instances occur, on 
the southern lines, of improvement both in 
style and keeping; and singular enough, the 
nearer we approach the great metropolis, the 
more highly kept are the grounds around them, 
and the greater the amount of good taste is dis¬ 
played. The best specimen of well-kept 
grounds around a railway station, we have ob¬ 
served in Scotland, is that at Portobello, whibh 
may be taken as a model, although less favored 
in point of situation than many others. 
Our friend, Mr. Copperfield, should have 
known that various plans have been suggested 
for turning into profitable account these im¬ 
mense spaces, now, as he very justly observes 
producing only crops of weeds, seeds that can 
well be dispensed with. Sowing down the 
banks with grass seed is not with a view to 
profit by the hay made, but to establish a sur¬ 
face less likely to be run down by rains. 
Planting them with trees, would, we think, be 
the most profitable; but then, while such reck¬ 
less carelessness is allowed to go on, on the 
part of the enginemen and stokers, and for 
want of securing the sparks of fire from the 
chimney tops, which could easily be provided 
against, we might expect to see a railway con¬ 
flagration which might not only burn down the 
trees on the embakment, but set fire to a whole 
country side. Were fire guarded against, there 
can be no doubt but a judicious selection of 
trees and shrubs would not only make in time 
a good return to the proprietors, but would ren¬ 
der the monotony of weedy and unprofitable 
surfaces extending for miles, less painful to the 
eye of taste, and more cheering to those of 
travellers, in general. Tall-growing trees have 
been very properly objected to, as in the event 
of storms blowing them over, the thoroughfare 
might be impeded: but the same objection could 
not be made to fruit trees trained up the in¬ 
clines, or plantations of gooseberries, currants, 
strawberries, &c. But these and every other 
mode of turning these slopes to profitable ac¬ 
count would be liable to injury from fire. 
Much, however, might be done by ornamental 
planting around the stations, and the introduc¬ 
tion of flowering shrubs and plants.— Hort. Ed.] 
-- 
Farmers’ Boys should be taught never to say 
“ I can't do it, for that never did anything. “ I'll 
try," has worked wonders; and “ I will do it," 
has performed miracles. 
A JAUNT IN OHIO.—No. 2. 
I was disappointed in my first impression of 
Cincinnati. I had supposed it to be chiefly 
built on a broad table above the first or lower 
bottom of the river, with the hills at some dis¬ 
tance in the rear of the town, as doubtless such 
a site would have been selected, had its founders 
dreamed of the future extent of their infant city. 
Instead of such, the town is built on a narrow 
belt of land, shut in by high hills, which are 
intersected by two small streams—Deer and 
Mill Creeks—and a few ravines, up the valleys 
of which the city follows the great thorough¬ 
fares to the back country, and has for many 
years, also, been cutting into the high hills 
which stand in the way of its progress, or in 
other parts has climbed up their precipitous 
sides in most inconvenient, although not unpic- 
turesque proximity, to their more humble and 
accessible neighbors. The town is, in the main, 
regularly laid out, so far as the intersection of 
streets and avenues are concerned, which are 
of good width, and most of them well graded 
and paved; but the strange intermixture of 
manufactories of all sorts—the smokes, and 
noises and hammerings, and stenches, rising up 
in fhe midst of stores and shops, and dwellings, 
and covering everything with coal dust and 
soot, certainly makes a queer mixture of occu¬ 
pation and residence. Here are streets of fine 
dwellings, spacious, rich, and costly, built of the 
best of bricks, and a most beautiful drab-colored 
free stone, which is quarried somewhere up the 
river—and a more beautiful building material 
I never saw. Magnificent and extensive stores, 
warehouses, churches, banks, and hotels, among 
which is the Burnet House, probably the finest 
in its architecture and arrangements, in America, 
various public institutions, belonging to sundry 
societies and corporations, churches, market 
houses, all mixed in, cheek-by-jowl, with tall, 
smoky chimneys, and workshops, with their 
clacking hammers and artificers of every descrip¬ 
tion, all driven by steam, and fed and warmed 
by bituminous coal, give it an appearance 
and character unique altogether. 
Then there is the deep, horse-pond-looking 
river, lying low down between red shelving 
banks; then at its lowest stages, but rising, I 
was told, in its highest floods, 60 feet above, 
and up into the stores of the lower streets, filled 
with three-story steamboats, flatboats, rafts, and 
barges, with whole coveys of coal cribs lying 
moored along the shores and quay, taking in 
and discharging passengers and cargoes, or 
waiting for a rise of water to go up or down, 
