liiral (£sSi[ws ^^^ rij« Libi- Luu ±ttto A. J Ijuw JSTew-York : G . P . Putnam and G o m p a n )' 1 8 f) 3 . RURAL ESSAYS. ;^ V BY Arjf DOWNING. EDITED, WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS; AND A LETTER TO HIS FRIENDS, BY FREDERIKA BREMER. NEW-YORK : GEORGE P. PUTNAM AND COMPANY, 10 PARK PLACE, M,DOCC.LIII. A >0 ^ _.^ ^ Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by GEORGE P. PUTNAM k CO.. in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-Xork. GiFT ESTATE OF WJLLiAM C. RIVES x.APfiiJL, 1840 JOHN F. TKO\\, Pkintek and Stekeotyper, 49 Ann-streot. P E E F A C E. rPHIS posthumous volume completes the series of Mr. -^ Downing's works. It comprises, with one or two ex- ceptions, all his editorial papers in the " Horticulturist." The Editor has preferred to retain their various temporary- allusions, because they serve to remind the reader of the circumstances under which the articles were prepared. Mr. Downing had designed a work upon the Shade-Trees of the United States, but left no notes upon the subject. In the preparation of the memoir, the Editor has been indebted to a sketch in the Knickerbocker Magazine, by Mrs. Monell, of Newburgh, to Mr. Wilder's eulogy before the Pomological Congress, and to an article in the " New- York Quarterly," by Clarence Cook, Esq. The tribute to the genius and character of Downing by Miss Bremer, although addressed to all his friends, has the unreserved warmth of a private letter. No man has lived in vain who has inspired such regard in such a woman. New-Yo]£K, April, 1853. CONTENTS MEMOIRS xi LETTER FROM MISS BREMER Ld HORTICULTURK L Introductory ••..... 8 II. Hints on Flower-Gardens ..... 6 III. Influence of Horticulture . . . . .18 IV. A Talk with Flora and Pomona . . , . 18 V. A Chapter on Roses . . . . . .24 VI. A Chapter on Green-Houses . . . .35 VII. On Feminine Taste in Rural Af'fairs . . . .44 VIII. Economy in Gardening ..... 55 IX. A Look about us . . . ... .60 X. A Spring Gossip ...... 65 XI. The Great Discovery in Vegetation . . . . T2 XII. State and Prospects of Horticulture ... 7*7 XIII. American vs. British Horticulture . . . .83 XTV. On the Drapery of Cottages and Gardens . . 88 CONTENTS. LANDSCAPE GARDENING. I. TuE Philosoi'uy of Rural Taste II. The Beautiful in Ground III. Hints to Rural Improvers IV. A FEW Hints on Landscape Gardening V. On the Mistakes of Citizens in Country Life VI. Citizens retiring to the Country . VII. A Talk about Public Parks and Gardens VIII. The New-York Park IX. Public Cemeteries and Public Gardens X. How to choose a Site for a Country-Seat XI. How TO arrange Country Places . XII. The Management of large Country Places X^HL Country Places in Autumn XIV. A Chapter on Lawns XV. Mr, Tudor's Garden at Nahant XVI. A Visit to Montgomery Place PAOE 101 106 110 119 123 131 138 147 154 160 166 172 177 181 183 192 RURAL ARCHITECTURK I. A Few Words on Rural Architecture II. Moral Influence of Good Houses in. A few Words on our Progress in Building IV. Cockneyism in the Country V. On the Improvements of Country Villages VI. Our Country Villages VII. On Semple Rural Cottages Vni. On the Color of Country Houses IX. A short Chapter on Country Churches X. A Chapter on School-Houses . XL How TO Build Ice-Houses , XII. The Favorite Poison of America 205 209 214 224 229 236 244 252 260 265 271 278 TREES. I. The Beautiful in a Tree II. How TO Popularize the Taste for Planting 289 293 CONTENTS. vn PAGE III. On Planting Shade-Trees ..... 299 ■/ IV. Trees in Towns and Villages . . . . 303 V. Shade-Trees IN Cities •. ..... 311 VI. Rare Evergreen Trees . . . . . 319 VII. A Word in Favor of Evergreens . . . . 327 VIII. The Chinese Magnolias . . . ... 335 ~^IX. The Neglected American Plants . . . . 339 X. The Art of Transplanting Trees . . . . . 343 VjXJ. On Transplanting Large Trees . . ... 349 XII. A Chapter on Hedges ..... 357 XIII. On the Employment of Ornamental Trees and Shrubs in North America . . ... . . . 374 AGRICULTURE. I. Cultivators, — ^The Great Industrial Class of America . 385 IL The National Ignorance of the Agricultural Interest . 390 III. The Home Education of the Rural Districts . . . 396 IV. How to enrich the Soil . . ... . 404 V. A Chapter on Agricultural Schools .... 410 VI. fA. Few Words on the Kitchen Garden . . . 416 VILr A Chat IN THE Kitchen Garden . . . .421 VHI. Washington, the Farmer .... 427 FRUIT. I. A Few Words on Fruit Culture .... 435 II. The Fruits in Convention ..... 442 ni. The Philosophy of Manuring Orchards . . . 452 IV. The Vineyards of the West .... 463 V. On the Improvement of Vegetable Races . . . 468 LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. I. Warwick Castle: Kenilworth : Stratford-on-Avon . 476 II. Kew-Gardens ; New Houses of Parliament : A Nobleman's Seat ....... 485 III. Chatsworth ....... 497 VIU CONTENTS. PAGE IV. English Travelling : Haddon Hall : Matlock : The Derby Arboretum: Botanic Garden in Regent's Park . oK- V. The Isle of Wight ...... 522 VI. WoBURN Abbey ...... 532 VII. Dropmore. — English Railways. — Society . . . 538 VIII. The London Parks ..... 5-17 MEMOIR MEMOIR ANDKEW JACKSON DOWNING was born at New- burgh, upon the Hudson, on the spot where he always lived, and which he alwa3'"S loved more than any other, on the 30th of October, 1815. His father and mother were both natives of Lexington, Massachusetts, and, upon their marriage, removed to Orange County, New- York, where they settled, some thirty or forty miles from Newburgh. Presently, however, they came from the interior of the county to the banks of the river. The father built a cot- tage upon the higlilands of Newburgh, on the skirts of the to^vn, and there his five children were born. He had begun life as a wheelwright, but abandoned the trade to become a nurseryman, and after working prosperously in his garden for twenty-one years, died in 1822, Andrew was born many years after the other children. He was the child of his parents' age, and, for that reason, very dear. He began to talk before he could walk, when he was only nine months old, and the wise village gossips shook their heads in his mother's little cottage, and pro- phesied a bright career for the precocious child. At eleven months that career manifestly began, in the gossips' eyes, by his walking bravely about the room : a handsome. cheerful, intelligent child, but quiet and thoughtful, pet- ted by the elder brothers and sister, standing soriietimes in the door, as he grew older, and watching the shadows of the clouds chase each other over the FishldU mountains upon the opposite side«of the river ; soothed by the uni- versal silence of the country, while the constant occupation of the father, and of the brother who worked with him in the nursery, made the boy serious, by necessarily leaving him much alone. In the little cottage upon the Newburgh highlands, looking down upon the broad bay which the Hudson river there makes, before winding in a narrow stream through the highlands of West Point, and looking eastward across the river to the Fishkill hiUs, which rise gradually from the bank into a gentle mountain boldness, and northward, up the river, to shores that do not obstruct the horizon, — passed the first years of the boy's life, thus early befriend- ing liim with one of the lovehest of landscapes. While his father and brother were pruning and grafting their trees, and the other brother was busily at work in the comb fac- tory, where he was employed, the young Andrew ran alone about the garden, playing his solitary games in the pre- sence of the scene whose influence helped to mould his life, and which, even so early, filled his mind with images of rural beauty. His health, like that of most children born in their parents' later years, was not at all robust. The father, watching the slight form glancing among his trees, and the mother, aware of her boy sitting silent and thoughtful, had many a pang of aj)prehension, which was not relieved by the ominous words of the gossips that it was " hard to raise these smart children," — the homely modern echo of the old Greek fancy, " Whom the gods love die young." MEMOIR. The mother, a thrifty housekeeper and a rehgious wo- man, occupied with her many cares, cooking, mending, scrubbing, and setting things to rights, probably looked forward with some apprehension to the future condition of her sensitive Benjamin, even if he lived. The dreamy, shy ways of the boy were not such as indicated the stern stuff that enables poor men's children to grapple with the world. Left to himself, his will began to grow imperious. The busy mother could not severely scold her ailing child ; but a sharp rebuke had probably often been pleasanter to him than the milder treatment that resulted from affec- tionate compassion, but showed no real sympathy. It is evident, from the tone in which he always spoke of his childhood, that his recollections of it were not alto- gether agreeable. It was undoubtedly clouded by a want of sympathy, which he could not understand at the time, but which appeared plainly enough when his genius came into play. It is the same kind of clouded childhood that so often occurs in hterary biography, where there was great mutual affection and no ill feeling, but a lack of that in- stinctive apprehension of motives and aims, which makes each one perfectly tolerant of each other. Wlien Andrew was seven years old, his father died, and his elder brother succeeded to the management of the nursery business. Andrew's developing tastes led him to the natural sciences, to botany and mineralogy. As he grew older he began to read the treatises upon these favor- ite subjects, and went, at length, to an academy at Mont- gomery, a town not far from Newburgh, and in the same county. Those who remember him here, speak of him as a thoughtful, reserved boy, looking fixedly out of his large, dark brown eyes, and carrying his brow a little incHued forward, as if slightly defiant. He was a poor boy, and XIV MEMOIR. very proud. Doubtless that indomitable will had already resolved that he should not be the least of the men that he and his schoolfellows would presently become. He was shy, and made few friends among the boys. He kept his own secrets, and his companions do not remember that he gave any hint, while at Montgomery Academy, of his l)eculiar power. Neither looking backward nor forward, was the prospect very fascinating to his dumb, and proba- bly a little dogged, ambition. Behind were the few first years of cljildhood, sickly, left much alone in the cottage and garden, with nothing in those around him (as he felt without knowing it) that strictly sympathized with him ; and yet, as always in such cases, of a nature whose devel- opment craved the most generous sympathy : these few years, too, cast among all the charms of a landscape which the FishkiU liills lifted from httleness, and the broad river inspired with a kind of grandeur ; years, which the univer- sal silence of the country, always so imposing to young imaginations, and the rainbow pomp of the year, as it came and went up and down the river-banks and over the mountains, and the general solitude of country life, were not very likely to enliven. Before, lay a career of hard work in a pursuit which rarely enriches the workman, with little apparent promise of leisure to pursue his studies or to follow his tastes. It is natural enough, that in the midst of such prospects, the boy, dehcately organized to appreciate his position, should have gone to his recitations and his play in a very silent — if not stern — manner, aU the more reserved and sUent for the firm resolution to master and not be mastered. It is hard to fancy that he was ever a blithe boy. The gravity of maturity came early upon him. Those who saw him only in later years can, probably, easily see the boy at Montgomery Academy, by fancying him quite as they knew him, less twenty or twenty-five years. One by one, the boys went from the academy to college, or into business, and when Andrew was sixteen years old, he also left the academy and return- ed home. He, too, had been hoping to go to college ; but the family means forbade. His mother, anxious to see him early settled, urged him, as his elder brothers were both doing well in business — the one as a nurseryman, and the other, who had left the comb factory, practis- ing ably and prosperously as a physician — to enter as a clerk into a drygoods store. That request explains the want of delight with which he remembered his childhood : because it shows that his good, kind mother, in the midst of her baking, and boihng, and darning the children's stockings, made no allowance — as how should she, not being able to perceive them — for the possibly very positive tastes of her boy. Besides, the first duty of each member of the poor household was, as she justly con- ceived, to get a Hving ; and as Andrew was a delicate child, and could not lift and carry much, nor brave the chances of an out-door occupation, it was better that he should be in the shelter of a store. He, however, a youth of sixteen years, fresh from the studies, and dreams, and hopes of the Montgomery Academy, found his first duty to be the gentle withstanding of his mother's wish ; and quite willing to " settle," if he could do it in his own way, joined his brother in the management of the nursery. He had no doubt of his vocation. Since it was clear that he must directly do something, his fine taste and exquisite appreciation of natural beauty, his love of natural forms, and the processes and phenomena of natural life, im- mediately determined his choice. Not in vain had his eyes first looked upon the mountains and the river. Those silent companions of his childhood claimed their own in the spirit with which the youth entered upon his profes- sion. To the poet's eye began to be added the philoso- pher's mind ; and the great spectacle of Nature which he had loved as beauty, began to enrich his life as knowledge. Yet I remember, as showing that with all his accurate science he was always a poet, he agreed in many con- versations that the highest enjoyment of beauty was quite independent of use ; and that while the pleasure of a botanist who could at once determine the family and species of a plant, and detail all the peculiarities and fit- ness of its structure, was very great and inappreciable, yet that it was upon a lower level than the instinctive delight in the beauty of the same flower. The botanist could not have the highest pleasure in the flower if he were not a poet. The poet would increase the variety of liis pleasure, if he were a botanist. It was this constant sub- jection of science to the sentiment of beauty that made him an artist, and did not leave him an artisan ; and his science was always most accurate and j)i"ofound, because the very depth and dehcacy of his feeling for beauty gave him the utmost patience to learn, and the greatest rapidity to adapt, the means of organizing to the eye the ideal image in his mind. About tliis time the Baron de Liderer, the Austrian Consul Greneral, who had a summer retreat in Newburgh, began to notice the youth, whose botanical and mineral- ogical tastes so harmonized with his own. Nature keeps fresh the feelings of her votaries, and the Baron, although an old man, made hearty friends with Downing ; and they explored together the hills and lowlands of the neighbor- hood, till it had no more vegetable nor mineral secrets from the enthusiasts. Downing always kept in the hall of his house, a cabinet, containing mineralogical specimens col- lected in these excursions. At the house of the Baron, also, and in that of his wealthy neighbor, Edward Arm- strong, Downing discovered how subtly cultivation refines men as well as plants, and there first met that polished society whose elegance and grace could not fail to charm him as essential to the most satisfactory intercourse, while it presented the most entire contrast to the associations of his childhood. It is not difficult to fancy the lonely child, playing unheeded in the garden, and the dark, shy boy, of the Montgomery Academy, meeting with a thrill of satisfac- tion, as if he had been waiting for them, the fine gentle- men and ladies at the Consul General's, and the wealthy neighbor's, Mr. Armstrong, at whose country-seat he was in- troduced to Mr. Charles Augustus Murray, when, for the first time, he saw one of the class that he never ceased to honor for their virtues and graces — the English gentleman. At this time, also, the figure of Raphael Hoyle, an English landscape painter, flits across his history. Congenial in taste and feehng, and with varying knowledge, the two young men rambled together over the country near New- burgh, and while Hoyle caught upon canvas the colors and forms of the flowers, and the outline of the landscape, Downing instructed him in their history and habits, until they wandered from the actual scene into discussions dear to both, of art, and life, and beauty ; or the artist piqued the imagination of his friend with stories of English parks, and of ItaUan vineyards, and of cloud-capped Alps, embracing every zone and season, as they rose, — while the untravelled youth looked across the river to the Fish- kill hills, and imagined Switzerland. This soon ended. Raphael Hoyle died. The living book of travel and MEMOIR. romantic exj)erience, in which the youth who had wandered no farther than to Montgomery Academy and to the top of the South Beacon, — the liighest hill of tlie Fishkill range, — ^had so deeply read of scenes and a life that suited him, was closed forever. Little record is left of these years of application, of work, and study. The Fishkill liills and the broad river, in whose presence he had always lived, and the quiet country around Newburgh, which he had so thoroughly ex- plored, began to claim some visible token of their influence. It is pleasant to know that his first Uterary works were re- cognitions of their charms. It shows the intellectual integ- rity of the man that, despite glowing hopes and restless ambition for other things, his first essay was written from his experience ; it was a description of the " Danskamer," or Devil's Dancing-Ground — a point on the Hudson, seven miles above Newburgh — publislied in the New- York Mirror. A description of Beacon Hill followed. He wrote, then, a discussion of novel-reading, and some botanical papers, which were published in a Boston journal. Whether he was discouraged by the ill success of these attempts, or perceived that he was not yet sufiicient mas- ter of his resources to present them projjerly to the public, does not appear, but he published nothing more for several years. Perhaps he knew that upon the subjects to which his natural tastes directed his studies, nothing but experience spoke with authority. Whatever the reason of his silence, however, he worked on unyieldingly, studying, proving, succeeding ; finding time, also, to read the poets and the philosophers, and to gain that famiharity with elegant literature which always graced his own composition. Of this period of his life, little record, but great results, remain. With his pen, and books, and microscoj)e, in the red house, and his pruning-knife and sharp eye in the nursery and garden, he was learning, adapting, and tri- umphing, — and also, doubtless, dreaming and resolving. If any stranger wishing to purchase trees at the nursery of the Messrs. Downing, in Newburgh, had visited that pleasant town, and transacted business with the younger partner, he would have been perplexed to understand why the younger partner with his large knowledge, his remark- able power of combination, his fine taste, his rich cultiva- tion, his singular force and precision of expression, his evi- dent mastery of his profession, was not a recognized authority in it, and why he had never been heard of For it was remarkable in Dovming, to the end, that he always attracted attention and excited speculation. The boy of the Montgomery Academy carried that slightly defiant head into the arena of life, and seemed always too much a critical observ^er not to challenge wonder, sometimes, even,' to excite distrust. That was the eye which in the vege- table world had scanned the law through the appearance, and followed through the landscape the elusive line of beauty. It was a fuU, firm, serious eye. He did not smile with his eyes as many do, but they held you as in a grasp, looking from under their cover of dark brows. The young man, now twenty years old or more, and hard at work, began to visit the noble estates upon the banks of the Hudson, to extend his experience, and confirm his nascent theories of art in landscape-gardening. Study- ing in the red cottage, and working in the nursery upon the Newburgh highlands, he had early seen that in a new, and unworked, and quite boundless country, with every variety of kindly climate and available soil, where fortunes arose in a night, an opportunity was ofiered to Art, of achieving a new and characteristic triumph. To touch XX the continent lying chaotic, in mountain, and lake, and forest, with a finger that should develop all its resources of beauty, for the admiration and benefit of its children, seemed to him a task worthy the highest genius. This was the dream that dazzled the silent years of his life in the garden, and inspired and strengthened him in every exertion. As he saw more and more of the results of this spirit in the beautiful Hudson country-seats, he was, naturally, only the more resolved. To lay out one garden well, in conformity with the character of the sur- rounding landscape, in obedience to the truest taste, and to make a man's home, and its grounds, and its accesso- ries, as genuine works of art as any picture or statue that the owner had brought over the sea, was, in his mind, the first step toward the great result. At the various places upon the river, as he visited them from time to time, he was received as a gentleman, a scho- lar, and the most practical man of the party, would neces- sarily be welcomed. He sketched, he measured ; " in a walk he plucks from an overhanging bough a single leaf, examines its color, form and structure ; inspects it with his microscope, and, having recorded his observations, pre- sents it to his friend, and invites him to study it, as sug- gestive of some of the first principles of rural architecture and economy," No man enjoyed society more, and none ever lost less time. His pleasure trips from point to point upon the river were the excursions of the honey-bee into the flower. He returned richly laden ; and the young partner, feeling from childhood the necessity of entire self- dependence, continued to live much alone, to be reserved, but always affable and gentle. These travels were usually brief, and strictly essential to his education. He was wisely getting ready ; it would be so fatal to speak without autho- MEMOIR. rity, and authority came only with much observation and many years. But, during these victorious incursions into the realms of exi3erience, the younger partner had himself, been con- quered. Directly opposite the red cottage, upon the other side of the river, at Fishkill Landing, lay, under blossoming locust trees, the estate and old family mansion of John P. De Wint, Esq. The place had the charms of a " moated grange," and was quite the contrast of the ele- gant care and incessant cultivation that marked the grounds of the young man in Newburgh. But the fine old place, indolently lying in luxuriant decay, was the seat of bound- less hospitality and social festivity. The spacious piazzas, and the gently sloping lawn, which made the foreground of one of the most exquisite ghmpses of the Hudson, rang all summer long with happy laughter. Under those blossom- ing locust trees were walks that led to the shore, and the moon hanging over Cro' Nest recalled to all loiterers along the bank the loveliest legends of the river. In winter the revel shifted from the lawn to the frozen river. One such gay household is sufficient nucleus for endless enjoyment. From the neighboring West Point, only ten miles distant, came gallant young officers, boating in summer, and skat- ing in winter, to serenade under the locusts, or join the dance upon the lawn. Whatever was young and gay was drawn into the merry maelstrom, and the dark-hau'ed boy from Newburgh, now grown, somehow, to be a gentleman of quiet and poHshed. manners, found himself, even when in the grasp of the scientific coils of Parmentier, Kepton, Price, Loudon, Lindley, and the rest, — or busy with knife, clay, and grafts, — dreaming of the grange beyond the river, and of the Marianna he had found there. Summer lay warm upon the hills and river ; the land- MEMOIR. scape was yet untouched by the scorching July heats ; and on the seventh of June, 1838, — he being then in his twenty-third year, — Downing was married to Caroline, eldest daughter of J. P. De Wint, Esq. At this time, he dissolved the business connection with his elder brother, and contiliued the nursery by himself There were other changes also. The busy mother of his childhood was busy no longer. She had now been for several years an invalid, unable even to walk in the garden. She continued to live in the little red cottage which Downing afterwards re- moved to make way for a green-house. Her sons were men now, and her daughter a woman. The necessity for her own exertion was passed, and her hold upon life was gradually loosened, until she died in 1839. Downing now considered himself ready to begin the career for which he had so long been preparing ; and very properly his first work was his own house, built in the gar- den of his father, and only a few rods from the cottage in which he was born. It was a simple house, in an Ehz- abethan style, by which he designed to prove that a beau- tiful, and durable, and convenient mansion, could be built as cheaply as a poor and tasteless temple, which seemed to be, at that time, the highest American conception of a fine residence. In this design he entirely succeeded. His house, which did not, however, satisfy his maturer eye, was externally very simple, but extremely elegant ; indeed, its chief impression was that of elegance. Internally it was spacious and convenient, very gracefully proportioned and finished, and marked every where by the same spirit. Wherever the eye feU, it detected that a wiser eye had been before it. All the forms and colors, the style of the furniture, the frames of the mirrors and pictures, the pat- terns of the carpets, were harmonious, and it was a bar- mony as easily achieved by taste as discord by vulgarity. There was no painful conformity, no rigid monotony ; there was nothing finical nor foppish in this elegance — it was the necessary result of knowledge and skill. Wliile the house was building, he Kved with his wife at her father's. He personally superintended the work, which went briskly forward. From the foot of the Fishkill hills beyond the river, other eyes superintended it, also, scan- ning, with a telescope, the Newburgh garden and growing house ; and, possibly, from some rude telegraph, as a white cloth upon a tree, or a blot of black paint upon a smooth board, Hero knew whether at evening to expect her Le- ander. The house was at length finished. A graceful and beautiful building stood in tha garden, higher and hand- somer than the httle red cottage — a very pregnant symbol to any poet who should chance that way and hear the history of the architect. Once fairly established in his house, it became the seat of the most gracious hospitahty, and was a beautiful illus- tration of that " rural home " upon whose influence Down- ing counted so largely for the education and inteUigent patriotism of liis countrymen. His personal exertions were unremitting. He had been for some time projecting a work upon his favorite art of Landscape Gardening, and presently began to throw it into form. His time for liter- ary labor was necessarily limited by liis superintendence of the nursery. But the book was at length completed, and in the year 1841, the Author being then twenty-six years old, Messrs. Wiley & Putnam published in New- York and London, " A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, adapted to North America, with a view to the Improvement of Country Kesidences. With XXIV Eemarks on Rural Architecture. By A. J. Downing." The most concise and comprehensive definition of Land- scape G-ardening that occurs in his works, is to be found in the essay, " Hints on Landscape Gardening." " It is an art," he says, " which selects from natural materials that abound in any country its best sylvan features, and by giving them a better opportunity than they could otherwise obtain, brings about a liigher beauty of de- velopment and a more perfect expression than nature herself oifers." The preface of the book is quite with- out pretence. " The love of country," says our author, with a gravity that overtops his years, "is inseparably connected with the love of home. Whatever, therefore, leads man to assemble the comforts and elegancies of life around his habitation, tends to increase local attach- ments, and render domestic life more delightful ; thus, not only augmenting his own enjoyment, but strengthening his patriotism, and making him a better citizen. And there is no employment or recreation which affords the mind greater or more permanent satisfaction than that of cultivating the earth and adorning our OAvn pro})erty. ' God Almighty first planted a garden ; and, indeed, it is the parent of human pleasures,' says Lord Bacon. And as the first man was shut out from the garden, in the cul- tivation of which no alloy was mixed with liis happiness, the desire to return to it seems to be implanted by natm-e, more or less strongly, in every heart." This book passed to instant popularity, and became a classic, invaluable to the thousands in every part of the country who were waiting for the master-word which should tell them what to do to make their homes as beau- tiful as they wished. Its fine scholarship in the literature and history of rural art ; its singular dexterity in stating the great principles of taste, and their application to actual circumstances, with a clearness that satisfied the dullest mind ; its genial grace of style, illuminated by the sense of that beauty which it was its aim to indicate, and with a cheerfulness which is one of the marked characteristics of Downing as an author ; the easy mastery of the subject, and its intiinsic interest ; — all these combined to secure to the book the position it has always occupied. The tes- timony of the men most competent to speak with author- ity in the matter was grateful, because deserved, praise. Loudon, the editor of " Eepton's Landscape Gardening," and j)erhaps at the time the greatest living critic in the dei:)artment of rural art, at once declared it " a masterly work ;" and after quoting freely from its pages, remarked : " We have quoted largely from this work, because in so doing we think we shall give a just idea of the great merit of the author." Dr. Lindley, also, in his " Gardener's Chronicle," dissented from " some minor points," but said : "On the whole, we know of no work in which the fundamental principles of this jjrofession are so well or so concisely expressed : " adding, " No English landscape gardener has written so clearly, or with so much real in- tensity." The "quiet, thoughtful, and reserved boy" of the Montgomery Academy had thus suddenly displayed the talent which was not suspected by his school-fellows. The younger partner had now justified the exj3ectation he aroused ; and the long, silent, careful years of study and experience insured the permanent value of the results he announced. The following year saw the pubhcation of the " Cottage Residences," in which the principles of the first volume were applied in detail. For the same reason it achieved a success similar to the " Landscape Gardening." MEMOIR. Rural England recognized its great value. Loudon said : " It cannot fail to he of great service." Another said : ■'We stretch our arm across the 'big water' to tender our Yankee coadjutor an English shake and a cordial re- cognition." These welcomes from those Avho knew what and why they welcomed, founded Downing's authority in the minds of the less learned, while the simplicity of his own statements confirmed it. . From the publication of the "Landscape Gardening" until his death, he continued to be the chief American authority in rural art. European honors soon began to seek the young gardener upon the Hudson. He had been for some time in corres- pondence with Loudon, and the other eminent men of the profession. He was now elected corresponding member of the Royal Botanic Society of London, of the Horticultural Societies of Berlin, the Low Countries, &c. Queen Anne of Denmark sent him " a magnificent ring," in acknow- ledgment of her pleasure in Iris works. But, as the years slowly passed, a sweeter praise saluted him than the Queen's ring, namely, the gradual improvement of the na- tional rural taste, and the universal testimony that it was due to Downing. It was found as easy to live in a hand- some house as in one that shocked all sense of propriety and beauty. The capabilities of the landscape began to develop themselves to the man who looked at it from his windows, with Downing's books in his hand. Mr. Wilder says that a gentleman " who is eminently qualified to form an enlightened judgment," declared that much of the im- provement that has taken place in this country during the last twelve years, in rural architecture and in ornamental gardening and planting, may be ascribed to him. Another gentleman, " speaking of suburban cottages in the West," says : "I asked the origin of so muCh taste, and was told it might "principally be traced to ' Downing's Cottage Resi- dences ' and the 'Horticulturist.'" He was naturally elect- ed an honorary member of most of the Horticultural Soci- eties in the country ; and as his interest in rural life was universal, embracing no less the soil and cultivation, than the plant, and flower, and fruit, with the residence of the cultivator, he received the same honor from the Agricultu- ral Associations. Meanwhile liis studies were unremitting ; and in 1845 Wiley & Putnam pubhshed in New- York and London " The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America," a volume of six hundred pages. The duodecimo edition had only lineal drawings. The large octavo was illustrated with finely colored plates, executed in Paris, from drawings made in this country from the original fruits. It is a masterly 'resum^ of the results of American experience in the his- tory, character, and growth of fruit, to the date of its pub- lication. The fourteenth edition was published in the year 1852. It was in May of the year 1846 that I first saw Down- ing. A party was made up under the locusts to cross the river and pass the day at "Highland Gardens," as his place was named. The river at Newburgh is about a mile wide, and is crossed by a quiet country ferry, whence the view downward toward the West Point Highlands, Butter Hill, Sugar-Loaf, Cro' Nest, and Skunnynmnk, is as beautiful a river view as can be seen upon a summer day. It was a merry party which crossed, that bright May morning, and broke, with ringing laughter, the silence of the river. Most of us were newly escaped from the city, where we had been blockaded by the winter for many months, and tilthough often tenipted by the warm days that came in March, opening the windows on Broadway and ranging tlie blossoming plants in them, to believe that' summer had fairly arrived, we had uniformly found the spring to be that laughing lie which the poets insist it is not. There was no dou])t longer, however. The country was so brilliant with the tender green that it seemed festally adorned, and it was easy enough to beheve that human genius could have no lovelier nor loftier task than the development of these colors, and forms, and opportunities, into their greatest use and adaptation to human life. " God Almighty first planted a garden, and, indeed, it is the first of human pleasures." Lord Bacon said it long ago, and the bright May morning echoed it, as we crossed the river. I had read Downing's books ; and they had given me the impression, naturally formed of one who truly said of himself, " Angry volumes of politics have we written none : but peaceful books, humbly aiming to weave something more into the fair garland of the beautiful and useful that encircles this excellent old earth." His image in my mind was idyllic. I looked upon him as a kind of pastoral poet. I had fancied a simple, abstracted cultivator, gentle and silent. We left the boat and drove to his house. The open gate admitted us to a smooth ave- nue. We had gHmpses of an Arbor- Vita3 hedge, — a small and exquisite lawn — rare and flowering trees, and bushes beyond — a lustrous and odorous thicket — a gleam of the river below — "a feeling" of the mountains across the river — and were at the same moment alighting at the door of the elegant mansion, in which stood, what ap- peared to me a tall, slight Spanish gentleman, with thidc black hair worn very long, and dark eyes fixed upon me with a searching glance. He was dressed simply in a cos- tume fitted for the morning hospitalities of his house, or for the study, or the garden. His welcoming smile was reserved, but genuine, — his manner singularly hearty and quiet, marked by the easy elegance and perfect savoir /aire which would have adorned the Escurial. We passed into the library. The book-shelves were let into the wall, and tlie doors covered with glass. They occupied only part of the walls, and upon the space above each was a bracket with busts of Dante, Milton, Petrarch, Franklin, Linnaeus, and Scott. There was a large bay window opposite the fireplace. The forms and colors of tliis room were delight- ful. It was the retreat of an elegantly cultivated gentle- man. There were no signs of work except a writing-table, with pens, and portfolios, and piles of letters. Here we sat and conversed. Our host entered into every subject gayly and familiarly, with an appreciating deference to differences of opinion, and an evident tenacity of his own, all the wliile, wliicli surprised me, as the pecu- liarity of the most accomplished man of the world. There was a certain aristocratic hauteur in his manner, a constant sense of personal dignity, which comported with the reserve of liis smile and the quiet welcome. His intellectual atti- tude seemed to be one of curious criticism, as if he were sharply scrutinizing all that his affability of manner drew forth. No one had a readier generosity of acknowledgment, and there was a negative flattery in his address and atten- tion, which was very subtle and attractive. In all allu- sions to rural aftairs, and matters with which he was entirely familiar, his conversation was not in the slightest degree pedantic, nor positive. He sjjoke of such things with the simplicity of a child talldng of his toys. The workman, the author, the artist, were entirely subjugated in him to the gentleman. That was his favorite idea. The gentle- man was the fuU flower, of which all the others were sug- gestions and parts. The gentleman is, to the various pow- ers and cultivations of the man, what the tone is to the picture, which lies in no single color, but in the harmony of the whole. The gentleman is the final bloom of the ninn. But no man could be a gentleman without original nobleness of feeling and genuineness of character. Gentle- ness was developed from that by experience and study, as the dehcate tinge upon pi-ecious fruits, by propitious circum- stances and healthy growth. In this feeling, which was a constituent of liis charac- ter, lay the secret of the appearance of hauteur that was so often remarked in him, to which Miss Bremer al- ludes, and which all his friends perceived, more or less dis- tinctly. Its origin was, doubtless, twofold. It sprang first from his exquisite mental organization, which instinct- ively shrunk from whatever was coarse or crude, and which made his artistic taste so true and fine. That easily ex- tended itself to demand the finest results of men, as of trees, and fruits, and flowers ; and then committed the natural error of often accepting the appearance of this re- sult, Avhere the fact was wanting. Hence he had a natural fondness for the highest circles of society — a fondness as deeply founded as his love of the best possible fruits. . His social tendency was constantly toward those to whom great wealth had given opportunity of that ameliorating culture, — of surrounding beautiful homes with beautiful grounds, and filling them with refined and beautiful persons, which is the happy fortune of few. Hence, also, the fact that his introduction to Mr. Murray was a remembered event, be- cause the mind of the boy instantly recognized that society to which, by affinity, he belonged ; and hence, also, that admiration of the character and life of the English gentle- man, which was life-long with him, and which made him, when he went to England, naturally and directly at home among them. From this, also, came his extreme fondness for music, although he had very little ear ; and often when his ^vife read to him any peculiarly beautiful or touching passage from a book, he was quite unable to speak, so much was he mastered by his emotion. Besides this deli- cacy of organization, which makes aristocrats of all who have it, the sharp contrast between his childhood and his mature life doubtlessly nourished a kind of mental protest against the hard discomforts, want of sympathy, and mis- understandings of poverty. I recall but one place in which he deliberately states this instinct of his, as an opinion. In the paper upon " Improvement of Vegetable Races," April, 1852, he says : " We are not going to be led into a physiological digres- sion on the subject of the inextinguishable rights of a su- perior organization in certain men, and races of men, which Nature every day reaffirms, notwithstanding the social- istic and democratic theories of our politicians." But this statement only asserts the difference of organization. No man was a truer American than Downing ; no man more o^jposed to aU kinds of recognition of that difference in intellectual organization by a difference of social rank. That he considered to be the true democracy which as- serted the absolute equality of opportunity ; — and, there- fore, he writes from Warwick Castle, a place which in every way could charm no man more than him : " but I turned my face at last westward toward my native land, and with uplifted eyes thanked the good God that, though to England, the country of my ancestors, it had been given to show the growth of man in his highest development of class or noble, to America has been reserved' the greater blessing of solving for the world the true problem of aU humanity, — that of the ahoKtion of all castes, and the re- cognition of tlie divine rights of every human soul/' On that May morning, in the library, I remember the conver- sation, drifting from subject to subject, touched an essay upon " Manners," by Mr. Emerson, then recently pub- lished ; and in the few words that Mr. Downing said, lay the germ of what I gradually discovered to be his feeling upon the subject. This hauteur was always evident in his personal intercourse. In his dealings with workmen, with publishers, Avith men of affairs of all kinds, the same feel- ing, which they called "stifi'ness," coldness," "i^ride," " haughtiness," or " reserve," revealed itself That first morning it only heightened in my mind the Spanish im- pression of the dark, slim man, who so courteously wel- comed us at his door. It was May, and the magnolias were in blossom. Un- der our host's guidance, we strolled about liis grounds, which, although they comprised but some five acres, were laid out in a large style, that greatly enhanced their aj)par- ent extent. The town lay at the bottom of the hill, be- tween the garden and the water, and there was a road just at the foot of the garden. But so skilfully were the trees arranged, that all suspicion of town or road was removed. Lying upon the lawn, standing in the door, or sitting under the light piazza before the parlor windows, the enchanted \dsitor saw only the garden ending in the thicket, wliich was so dexterously trimmed as to reveal the lovehest glimpses of the river, each a picture in its frame of fohage, but wliich was not cut low enough to betray the presence of road or town. You fancied the estate extended to the river ; yes, and probably owned the river as an ornament, and in- cluded the mountains beyond. At least, you felt that here was a man who knew that the best part of the land- scape could not be owned, but belonged to every one who could appropriate it. The thicket seemed not only to con- ceal, but to annihilate, the town. So sequestered and sat- isfied was the guest of that garden, that he was quite care- less and incurious of the world beyond. I have often passed a week there without wishing to go outside the gate, and entirely forgot that there was any town near by. Sometimes, at sunset or twilight, we stepped into a light wagon, and turning up the hill, as we came out of the grounds, left Newburgh below, and drove along roads hang- ing over the river, or, passing Washington's Head Quar- ters, trotted leisurely along the shore. Witliin his house it was easy to understand that the home was so much the subject of liis thought. Why did he wish that the landscape should be lovely, and the houses graceful and beautiful, and the fruit fine, and the floAvers perfect, but because these were all dependencies and oma- jaents of home, and home was the sanctuary of the liigh- est human affection. This was the point of departure of his philosophy. Nature must serve man. The landscape must be made a picture in the gallery of love. Home was the pivot upon which turned all his theories of rural art. All his efforts, all the grasp of genius, and the cunning of talent, were to complete, in a perfect home, the apotheosis of love. It is in this fact that the permanence of his in- fluence is rooted. His works are not the result of elegant taste, and generous cidtivation, and a clear intellect, only ; but of a noble hope that inspired taste, cultivation, and intellect. Tliis saved him as an author from being wrecked U2)on formulas. He was strictly scientific, few men in his department more so ; but he was never rigidly academical. He always discerned the thing signified through the ex- pression ; and, in his own art, insisted that if there was 3 nothing to say, nothing should be said. He knew per- fectly well that there is a time for discords, and a place for departures from rule, and he understood them when they came, — which was peculiar and very lovely in a man of so delicate a nervous organization. This led him to be tolerant of all differences of opinion and action, and to be sensitively wary of injuring the feelings of those from whom he diifered. He was thus scientific in the true sense. In his department he was wise, and we find him writing from Warwick Castle again, thus : " Whoever designed this front, made up as it is of lofty towers and irregular walls, must have been a poet as well as architect, for its com- position and details struck me as having the proportions and congruity of a fine scene in nature, which we feel is not to be measured and defined by the ordinary rules of art." His own home was his finest work. It was materially beautiful, and spiritually bright with the purest lights af affection. Its hospitality was gracious and graceful. It consulted the taste, wishes, and habits of the guest, but with such unobtrusiveness, that the favorite flower every morning by the plate upon the breakfast-table, seemed to have come there as naturally, in the family arrangements, as the plate itself He held his house as the steward of his friends. His social genius never suffered a moment to drag wearily by. No man was so necessarily devoted to his own affairs, — no host ever seemed so devoted to his guests. Those guests were of the most agreeable kind, or, at least, they seemed so in that house. Perhaps the inter- preter of the House Beautiful, she who — in the poet's natural order — was as "moonlight unto sunlight," was the universal solvent. By day, there were always books, conversation, driving, working, lying on the lawn, excur- MEMOIR. XXXV sions into the moiuiiains across the river, visits to beau- tiful neighboring places, boating, botanizing, painting, — or whatever else could be done in the country, and done in the pleasantest way. At evening, there was music, — fine playing and singing, for the guest was thrice welcome who was musical, and the musical were triply musical there, — dancing, charades, games of every kind, — never suffered to flag, always delicately directed, — and in due season some slight violation of the Maine Law. Mr. Downing liked the Ohio wines, with which his friend, Mr. Longworth, kept him supplied, and of which he said, with his calm good sense, in the "Horticulturist," August, 1850, — " We do not mean to say that men could not Hve and breathe just as well if there were no such thing as wine known ; but that since the time of Noah men will not be contented with merely li\dng and breatliing ; and it is therefore better to pro\dde them with proper and wholesome food and drink, than to put improper aliments witliin their reach." Charades were a favorite diversion, in which sev- eral of his most frequent guests excelled. He was always ready to take part, but his reserve and self-consciousness interfered with his success. His social enjoyment was always quiet. He rarely laughed loud. He preferred rather to sit with a friend and watch the dance or the game from a corner, than to mingle in them. He wrote verses, but never showed them. They were chiefly rhyming let- ters, clever and graceful, to his wife, and her sisters, and some intimate friends, and to a Httle niece, of whom he was especially fond. One evening, after vainly endeavoring to persuade a friend that he was mistaken in the kind of a fruit, he sent him the following characteristic hues : • "TO THE DOCTOR, ON HIS PASSION FOE THE 'DUCHESS OF OLDENBURGIL' ' " Dear Doctor, I write you this little effusion, On learning you're still in that fatal delusion Of thinking the object you love is a Duchess, When 'tis only a milkmaid you hold in your clutches ; Why, 'tis certainly plain as the spots in the sun. That the creature is only a fine Dutch. Mignonne. She is Dutch — there is surely no question of that, — She's so large and so ruddy — so plump and so fat ; And that she's a Mignonne — a beauty — most moving, Is equally proved by your desperate loving ; But that she's a Duchess I flatly deny, There's such a broad twinkle about her deep eye ; And glance at the russety hue of her skin — A lady — a noble — would think it a sin ! Ah no, my dear Doctor, upon my own honor, I must send you a dose of the true Bella donna ! " I had expressed great delight with the magnolia, and carried one of the flowers in my hand during our morning stroll. At evening he handed me a fresh one, and every day while I remained, the breakfast-room was perfumed by the magnolia that was placed beside my plate. This deh- cate thoughtfulness was universal with him. He knew all the flowers that his friends especially loved ; and in his notes to me he often wrote, " the magnolias are waiting for you," as an irresistible allurement — which it was very apt to prove. Downing was in the Hbrary when I came down the morning after our arrival. He had the air of a man who has been broad awake and at work for several hours. There was the same quiet greeting as before — a gay conversation, glancing at a thousand things — and breakfist. After breakfast he disappeared ; but if, at any time, an excursion was proposed, — to climb some hill, to explore some meadows rich in rhododendron, to \isit MEMOIR. XXXVll \ some lovely lake, — he was quite ready, and went with the same unhurried air that marked all his actions. Like Sir Walter Scott, he was producing results implying close appHcation and labor, but without any apparent expense of time or means. His step was so leisurely, his manner so composed, there was always such total absence of wea- riness in all he said and did, that it was impossible to be- lieve he was so diligent a worker. But this composure, this reticence, this leisurely air, were all imposed upon his manner by his regal wUl. He was under the most supreme self-control. It was so abso- lute as to deprive him of spontaneity and enthusiasm. In social intercourse he was like two persons : the one con- versed with you pleasantly upon every topic, the other watched you from behind that pleasant talk, like a senti- nel. The delicate child, left much to himself by his parents, naturally grew waj^^vard and imperious. But the man of shrewd common sense, with his way to make in the world, saw clearly that that waywardness must be sternly subjugated. It was so, and at the usual expense. What the friend of Downing most desired in him was a frank and unreserved flow of feeling, which should drown out that curious, critical self-consciousness. He felt this want as much as. any one, and often playfuUy endeavored to supply it. It doubtless arose, in great part, from too fine a ner- vous organization. Under the mask of the finished man of the world he concealed the most feminine feelings, which 'often expressed themselves with pathetic intensity to the only one in whom he unreseiTedly confided. This critical reserve behind the cordial manner invested his whole character with mystery. The long dark hair, the firm dark eyes, the slightly defiant brow, the Spanish mien, that welcomed us that May morning, seemed to SXXVlll me always afterward, the symbols of his character. A cloud wrapped liis mner life. Motives, and the deeper feel- ings, were lost to view in that obscurity. It seemed that within this cloud there might be desperate struggles, like the battle of the Huns and Romans, invisible in the air, but of whicli no token escaped into the experience of his friends. He confronted circumstances with the same composed and indomitable resolution, and it was not possible to tell whether he were entertaining angels, or wrestling with demons, in the secret chambers of his soul. There are passages in letters to his wife which indicate, and they only by impli- cation, that his character was tried and tempered by strug- gles. Those most intimate letters, however, are full of expressions of religious faith and dependence, sometimes uttered with a kind of clinging earnestness, as if he well knew the value of the peace that passes understanding. But nothing of all this appeared in liis friendly inter- course with men. He had, however, very few intimate friends among men. His warmest and most confiding friendships were with women. In his intercourse with them, he revealed a rare and beautiful sense of the uses of friendship, which united him very closely to theni. To men he was much more inaccessible. It cannot be denied that the feeling of mystery in his character affected the im- pression he made upon various persons. It might be called as before, " haughtiness," " reserve," " coldness," oi- " hardness,"* but it was quite the same thing. It re- pelled many who were otherwise most strongly attracted • to him by his books. In others, still, it begot a slight dis- trust, and suspicion of self-seeking upon his jjart. I remember a little circumstance, the impression of which is strictly in accordance with my feeling of this sin- gular mystery in his character. We had one day been sitting in the library, and he had told me his intention of building ia little study and working-room, adjoining the house: "but I don't know," he said, "where or how to- connect it with the house." But I was very well convinced that he would arrange it in the best possible manner, and was not surprised when he afterward wrote me that he had made a door tlii'ough the wall of the library into the new building. This door occupied just the space of one of the book-cases let into the wall, and, by retaining the double doors of the book-case precisely as they were, and putting false books beliind the glass of the doors, the appearance of the library was entirely unaltered, while the whole appa- rent book-case, doors and all, swung to and fro, at his will, as a private door. During my next visit at his house, I was sitting very late at night in the library, with a single candle, thinking that every one had long since retired, and having quite forgotten, in the perfectly familiar appearance of the room, that the little change had been made, when suddenly one of the book-cases flew out of the wall, turn- ing upon noiseless hinges, and, out of the perfect darkness behind. Downing darted into the room, while I sat staring Hke a benighted guest in the Castle of Otranto. The mo- ment, the place, and the circumstance, were entu-ely har- monious with my impression of the man. Thus, although, upon the bright May morning, I had crossed the river to see a man of transparent and simple nature, a lover and poet of rural beauty, a man who had travelled httle, who had made his own way into poHshed and cultivated social relations, as he did into every thing which he mastered, being altogether a self-made man — I found the courteous and accomplished gentleman, the quiet man of the world, full of tact and easy dignity, in whom it was easy to discover that lover and poet, though not in the xl MEMOIR. form anticipated. His exquisite regard for the details of life, gave a completeness to his household, which is nowhere surpassed. Fitness is the first element of beauty, and every thing in his arrangement was appropriate. It was hard not to sigh, when contemplating the beautiful results he accomplished by taste and tact, and at comparatively little pecuniary expense, to think of the sums elsewhere squandered upon an insufficient and shallow splendor. Yet, as beauty was, with Downing, life, and not luxury, although he was, in feeling and by actual profession, the Priest of Beauty, he was never a Sybarite, never sentimen- tal, never weakened by the service. In the dispositions of most men devoted to beauty, as artists and poets, there is a vein of languor, a leaning to luxury, of which no trace was even visible in him. His habits of life were singularly regular. He used no tobacco, drank little wine, and was no gourmand. But he was no ascetic. He loved to en- tertain Sybarites, poets, and the lovers of luxury : doubt- less from a consciousness that he had the magic of pleasing them more than they had ever been pleased. He enjoyed the pleasure of his guests. The various play of different characters entertained him. Yet with all liis fondness for fine places, he justly estimated the tendency of their in- fluence. He was not enthusiastic, he was not seduced into blindness by his own preferences, but he main- tained that cool and accurate estimate of things and ten- dencies which always made his advice invaluable. Is there any truer account of the syren infi.uence of a superb and extensive country-seat than the following from the paper : " A Visit to Montgomery Place." " It is not, we are sure, the spot for a man to plan campaigns of con- quest, and we doubt, even, whether the scholar whose am- bition it is MEMOIR. Xli < " to scorn delights, And live laborious days," would not find something in the air of this demesne so soothing as to dampen the fire of his great purposes, and dispose him to beheve that there is more dignity in repose, than merit in action." So, certainly, I believed, as the May days passed, and found me still lingering in the enchanted garden. In August, 1846, " The Horticulturist " was com- menced by Mr. Luther Tucker, of Slbaiiy; who invited Mr. Downing to become the editor, in which position he remained, wiiting a monthly leader for it, until his death. These articles are contained in the present vol- ume. Literature offers no more charming rural essays. They are the thoughtful talk of a country gentleman, and scholar, and practical workman, upon the rural aspects and interests of every month in the year. They insinuate instruction, rather than directly teach, and in a style mel- low, mature, and cheerful, adapted to every age and every mood. By their variety of tojiic and treatment, they are, perhaps, the most complete memorial of the man. Their genial simpKcity fascinated all kinds of persons. A cor- respondence Avhich might be called affectionate, sprang up between the editor and scores of his readers. They want- ed instruction and adidce. They confided to him their plans and hopes ; to him — the personally unknown " we " of their montlily magazine — the reserved man whom pub- lishers and others found " stifi"," and " cold," and " a lit- tle haughty," and whose fine points of character stood out, like sunny mountain peaks against a mist. These letters, it appears, were personal, and full of feehng. The writers wished to know the man, to see his portrait, and many requested him to have it published in the " Horti- xlii MEMOIR. t culturist." When in his neighborhood, these correspond- ents came to visit him. They were anxious " to see the man who had written books which had enabled them to make their houses beautifid, — which had helped their wives in tlie flower-garden, and had shown them how, with little expense, to decorate their humble parlors, and add a grace to the barrenness of daily life." All this was better than Queen Anne's " magnificent ring." Meanwhile, business in the nursery looked a little threatening. Money was always dropping from the hospi- table hand of the owner. Expenses increased — affairs became complicated. It is not the genius of men like Downing to manage the finances very sldlfuUy. "Every tree that he sold for a dollar, cost liim ten shilhngs ; " — which is not a money-making process. He was perhaps too la\dsh, too careless, too sanguine. " Had his income been a million a minute, he would always have been in debt," says one who knew liim well. The composed manner was as unruffled as ever ; the regal will j^reserved the usual appearance of things, but in the winter of 1846-7 Mr. Downing was seriously embarrassed. It was a very grave juncture, for it was Hkely that he would be obliged to leave his house and begin life again. But his friends ralKed to the rescue. They assured to him his house and grounds ; and he, without losing time, without repining, and with the old determination, went to work more industriously than ever. His attention was unremitting to the " Horticulturist," and to all the projects he had undertaken. His interest in the management of the nursery, however, decreased, and he devoted himself Avith more energy to rural architecture and landscape gardening, until he gradually discontinued altogether the raising of trees for sale. His house was still the resort of the most MEMOIR. xliii brilliant society ; still — as it always had been, and was, until the end — the seat of beautifid hospitality. He was often enough perplexed in liis affairs — hurried by the monthly recurring necessity of " the leader," and not quite satisfied at any time until that literary task was accomplished. His business confined and interested him ; his large cor- respondence was promptly managed ; but he was still san- guine, under that Spanish reserve, and still spent j^rofusely. He had a thousand interests ; a State agricultural school, ^ national agricultural bureau at Washington, designing pri- vate and public buildings, laying out large estates, pursuing his own scientific and literary studies, and prej^aring a work upon Kural Architecture. From his elegant home he was scattering, in the Horticulturist, pearl-seed of precious suggestion, which fell in all kinds of secluded and remote regions, and bore, and are bearing, costly fruit. In 1849, Mr. John Wiley pubKshed " Hints to Young Architects, by George Wightwck, Architect ; with Adr ditional Notes and Hints to Persons about Building in this Country, by A. J. Downing." It was a work prepar-' atory to the origmal one he designed to pubHsh, and full of most valuable suggestions. For in every tiling he was American. His sharp sense of propriety as the primal element of beauty, led him constantly to insist that the place, and circumstances, and time, should always be care- fully considered before any stejD was taken. The satin shoe was a grace in the parlor, but a deformity in the gar- den. The Parthenon was perfect in a certain climate, under certain conditions, and for certain purposes. But the Parthenon as a country mansion in the midst of American woods and fields was unhandsome and offensive. His aim in building a house was to adapt it to the site, and to the means and character of the owner. xliv MEMOIR. It was in the autumn of 1849 that Frederika Bre- mer came to America. She had been for several years in intimate correspondence witli Mr. Downin<^, and was closely attracted to him by a profound sympathy with his view of the dignity and influence of the home. He re- ceived Miss Bremer upon her arrival, and she went with him to his house, where she staid several weeks, and wrote there the introduction to the authorized American edition of her works. It is well for us, perhaps, that as she has written a work upon " The Homes of the United States,'! she shoidd have taken her first impression of them from that of Mr. Downing. During all her travels in this country she constantly corresponded with him and his wife, to whom she was very tenderly attached. Her letters were full of cheerful humor and shrewd observation. She went bravely about alone, and was treated, almost without exception, with consideration and courtesy. And after her journey was over, and she was about to return home, she came to say farewell where she had first greeted America, in Downing's garden. In this year he finally resolved to devote himself entirely to architecture and building, and, in order to benefit by the largest variety of experience in elegant rural life, and to se- cure the services of an accomj)lished and able architect, thoroughly trained to the business he proposed, Mr. Dovming went to England in the summer of 1850, having arranged with Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for the 2)ubKcation of " The Architecture of Country Houses ; including Designs for Cottages, Farm-houses, and Villas." Already in correspondence with the leading Englishmen in his department, Mr. Downing was at once cordially welcomed. He showed the admirable, and not the un- friendly, qualities of his countrymen, and was directly en- MEMOIR. Xlv gaged in a series of visits to the most extensive and remarkable of English comitiy seats, where he was an honored guest. The delight of the position w^as beyond words to a man of his pecuhar character and habits. He saw on every hand the perfection of elegant rural Hfe, which was his ideal of life. He saw the boundless j)arks, the cultivated landscape, the tropics imprisoned in glass ; he saw sj^acious Italian villas, more Italian than in Italy ; ^ every various triumph of park, garden, and country- house. But with these, also, he met in the pleasantest way much fine English society, which was his ideal of society. There was nothing wanting to gratify his fine and fastidious taste ; but the j^assage already quoted from his letter at Warwick Castle shows how firmly his faith was set upon his native land, while his private letters are full of afiectionate longing to return. It is easy to figure him moving with courtly grace through the rooms of palaces, gentle, respectful, low in tone, never exaggerating, welcome to lord and lady for his good sense, his practical knowledge, his exact detail ; pleasing the English man and woman by his Enghsh sympathies, and interesting them by his manly and genuine, not boasting, assertions of Ameri- can genius and success. Looking at the picture, one re- members again that earlier one of the boy coming home from Montgomery Academy, in Orange County, and intro- duced at the wealthy neighbor's to the Enghsh gentleman. The instinct that remembered so slight an event secured his appreciation of all that England offered. No Ai^isri- can ever visited England with a mind more in tune ^vith aU that is nobly characteristic of her. He remarked, upon his return, that he had been much impressed by the quiet, religious life and habits wliich he found in many great Enghsh houses. It is not a point of English life often Xlvi MEMOIR. noticed, nor presupposed, but it was doubly grateful to liim, because he was always a Christian believer, and be- cause all parade was repugnant to him. His letters before his marriage, and during the last years of his life, evince the most genuine Christian faith and feehng. His residence in England was very brief — a summer trip. He crossed to Paris and saw French life. For- tunately, as his time was short, he saw more in a day than most men in a month, because he was prepared to see, and knew wliere to look. He found the assistant he wished in Mr. Calvert Vaux, a young English ar- cliitect, to whom he was introduced by the Secretary of the Architectural Association, and with whom, so mutual was the satisfaction, he directly concluded an agreement. Mr. Vaux sailed with liim from Liverpool in September, presently became his partner in business, and commanded, to the end, Mr. Downing's unreserved confidence and respect. I remember a Christmas visit to Downing in 1850, after his return from Europe, when we all danced to a fiddle upon the marble pavement of the hall, by the fight of rustic chandeliers wreathed with Christmas green, and under the antlers, and pikes, and helmets, and breastplates, and plumed hats of cavaliers, that hung upon the walls. The very genius of Engfish Christmas ruled the revel. During these years he was engaged in superintending the various new editions of his works, and looking forward to larger achievements with maturer years. He designed a greatly enlarged edition of the " Frmt-Trees," and spoke occasionally of the " Shade-Trees," as a work Avhich would be of the greatest practical value. He was much interested in the estabfishment of the Pomological Con- gress, was chairman of its fruit committee from the begin- MEMOIR. xlvii ning, and drew up the " Rules of American Pomology." Every moment had its work. There was not a more use- fbl man in America ; but liis visitor found still the same quiet host, leisurely, disengaged ; picking his favorite flowers before breakfast ; driving here and there, writing, studying, as if rather for amusement ; and at twihght stepping into the wagon for a loitering drive along the river. His love of the country and faith in rural influences were too genuine for him not to be deeply interested in the improvement of cities by means of j)ubHc parks and gar- dens. Not only for their sanitary use, but' for their ele- gance and refining influence, he was anxious that all our cities should be richly endowed with them. He alluded frequently to the subject in the columns of his magazine, and when it was resolved by Congress to turn the pubHc grounds in Washington, near the Capitol, White House, and Smithsonian Institute, into a public garden and pro- menade, Downing was naturally the man invited by the President, in April, 1851, to design the arrangement of the grounds and to superintend their execution. All the de- signs and much of the work Avere completed before his death. This new labor, added to the rest, while it in- creased his income, consumed much of his time. He went once every month to Washington, and was absent ten or twelve days. He was not suffered to be at peace in this position. There were plenty of jealousies and rivalries, and much sharp questioning about the $2500 annually paid to an accomplished artist for lapng out the public grounds of the American Capital, in a manner worthy the nation, and for reclaiming many acres from waste and the breeding of miasma. At length the matter was discussed in Congress. xlviii MEMOIR. On the 24th March, 1852, during a debate upon various appropriations, Mr. Jones, of Tennessee, moved to strike out the sum of |1 2,000, proposed to complete the im- provements around the President's house ; complained that there were great ahuses under the proviso of this appro- priation, and declared, quite directly, that Mr. Downing was overpaid for his services. Mr. Stanton, of Kentucky, replied : — " It is astonishing to my mind — and I have no doubt to the minds of others — with what facility other- wise intelligent and resjiectable gentlemen on this floor can deal out wholesale denunciations of men about whom they know nothing, and will not inform themselves ; and how much the legislation of the country is controlled by prejudices thus invoked and clamor thus raised." After speaking of the bill under which the improvements were making, he continued : " The President was authorized to appoint some competent person to superintend the carrying out of the plan adopted. He appointed Mr. Downing. And who is he ? One of the most accomplished gentlemen in his profession in the Union ; a man known to the world as pos- sessing rare sldll as a ' rural architect ' and landscape garden- er, as well as a man of great scientific intelligence. ••■' * * * I deny that he has neglected his duties, as the gentleman from Tennessee has charged. Instead of being here only three days in the month, he has been here vigilantly dis- charging Ills duties at all times when those duties required him to be here. He has suj)erintended, directed, and carried out the plan adopted, as fully as the funds appro- priated have enabled him to do. If all the officers of the Government had been as conscientious and scrupulous in the discharge of their duties as he has been since his appointment, there would be no ground for reproaches against those who have control of the Government." MEMOIR. xlix Mr. Downing was annoyed by this continual carping and bickering, and anxious to have the matter definitely ar- ranged, he requested the President to summon the Cabinet. The Secretaries assembled, and Mr. Downing was presented. He explained the case as he understood it, unrolled his plans, stated his duties, and the time he devoted to them, and the salary he received. He then added, that he wished the arrangement to be clearly understood. If the President and Cabinet thought that his require- ments were extravagant, he was perfectly willing to roll up his plans, and return home. If they approved them, he would gladly remain, but upon the express condition that he was to be relieved from the annoyances of the quarrel. The President and Cabinet agreed that his plans were the best, and liis demands reasonable ; and the work went on in peace from that time. The year 1852 opened upon Downing, in the gar- den where he had played and dreamed alone, while the father tended the trees ; and to which he had clung, with indefeasible instinct, when the busy mother had suggested that her delicate boy would thrive better as a drygoods clerk. He was just past his thirty-sixth birth-day, and the FishldU mountains, that had watched the boy depart- ing for the academy where he was to show no sign of his power, now beheld him, in the bloom of manhood, honored at home and abroad — no man, in fact, more honored at home than he. Yet the honor sprang from the work that had been achieved in that garden. It was there he had thought, and studied, and observed. It was to that home he returned from his little excur- sions, to ponder upon the new things he had seen and heard, to try them by the immutable principles of taste, and to test them by rigorous proofs. It was from that 4 1 MEMOIR. home that he looked upon the landscape which, as it allured his youth, now satisfied his manhood. The moun- tains, upon whose shoreward slope liis wife was horn under the blossoming locusts on the very day on which he was born in the Newburgh garden, smiled upon his success and shared it. He owed them a debt he never disavowed. Below his house flowed the river of which he so proudly wrote in the preface to the "Fruit-Trees" — "A man born on the banks of one of the noblest and most fruitful rivers in America, and whose best days have been spent in gardens and orchards, may perhaps be pardoned for talking about fruit-trees." Over the gleaming bay which the river's ex- pansion at Newburgh forms, glided the dazzling summer days ; or the black thunder-gusts swept suddenly out from the bold liighlands of West Point ; or the winter landscape lay calm around the garden. From his windows he saw all the changing glory of the year. New- York was of easy access by the steamers that constantly passed to and from Albany and the river towns, and the railroad brought the city within three hours of his door. It brought constant visitors also, from the city and beyond ; and scattered up and down the banks of the Hudson were the beautiful homes of friends, with whom he was con- stantly in the exchange of the most unrestrained hospi- tality. He added to his house the working-room commu- nicating with the library by the mysterious door, and was deeply engaged in the planning and building of country- houses in every direction. Among these I may mention, as among the last and finest, the summer residence of Daniel Parish, Esq., at Newport, R. I. Mr. Downing knew that Newport was the great social exchange of the country, that men of wealth and taste yearly assembled there, and that a fine house of liis desitrnincr erected there would be of the MEMOIR. li greatest service to his art. Tkis house is at once simple, massive, and graceful, as becomes the spot. It is the Avork of an artist, in the finest sense, harmonious with the bare cliff and the sea. But even where his personal services were not required, his books were educating taste, and his influence was visible in hundreds of houses that he had never seen. He edited, during tliis year, Mrs. Loudon's Gardening for Ladies, which was published by Mr. John Wiley. No man was a more practically useful friend to thousands who did not know liim. Yet if, at any time, while his house was full of visitors, business summoned him, as it frequently did, he sKpj^ed quietly out of the gate, left the visitors to a care as thoughtful and beau- tiful as liis own, and his house was made their home tor the time they chose to remain. Downing was in his thirty-seventh year, in the fulness of his fame and power. The difficulties of the failure were gradually dis- appearing behind him like clouds rolling away. He stood in his golden prime, as in his summer garden ; the Fu- ture smiled upon him Hke the blue Fishkill hills beyond the river. That Future, also, lay beyond the river. At the end of June, 1852, I went to pass a few days with him. He held an annual feast of roses with as many friends as he could gather and his house could hold. The days of my visit had all the fresh sweetness of early sum- mer, and the garden and the landscape were fuller than ever of grace and beauty. It was an Arcadian chapter, with the roses and blossoming figs upon the green-house wall, and the music by moonhght, and reading of songs, and tales, and games upon the lawn, under the Warwick vase. Boccaccio's groups in their Fiesole garden, were not gayer ; nor the bUthe circle of a summer's -day upon Sir Walter Vivian's lawn. Indeed it was precisely in Down- Hi MEMOIR. ing's garden that the poetry of such old traditions became fact — or rather the fact was lifted into that old poetry. He had achieved in it the beauty of an extreme civiliza- tion, without losing the natural, healthy vigor of his coun- try and time. One evenino; — the moon was full — we crossed in a row- boat to the Fishkill shore, and floated upon the gleaming river under the black banks of foliage to a quaint old coun- try-house, in whose small library the Society of the Cin- cinnati was formed, at the close of the Revolution, and in whose rooms a pleasant party was gathered that summer evening. The doors and windows were open. We stood in the rooms or loitered upon the piazza, looking into the unspeakable beauty of the night. A lady was pointed out to me as the heroine of a romantic history — a handsome woman, with the traces of hard experience in her face, standing in that little peaceful spot of summer moonlight, as a child snatching a brief dream of jjeace between spasms of mortal agony. As we returned at midnight across the river. Downing told us more of the stranger lady, and of his early feats of swimming from Newburgh to Fishldll ; and so we drifted homeward upon the oily calm with talk, and song, and silence — a brief, beautiful voyage upon the water, where the same summer, while yet unladed, should see liim embarked upon a longer journey. In these last days he was the same generous, thoughtful, quiet, effective person I had always found him. Friends peculiarly dear to him were in his house. The Washing- ton work was advancing finely : he was much interested in his Newport plans, and we looked forward to a gay meet- ing there in the later smnmer. The time for his monthly trip to Washington arrived while I was still his guest. " We shall meet in Newport," I said. " Yes," he an- MEMOIR. liii swered, " but you must stay and keep house with my wife until I return." I was gone before he reached home again, but, with many wlio wished to consult him about houses they were building, and with many whom he honored and wished to know, awaited his promised visit at Newport. Mr. Downing had intended to leave Newburgh with his wife upon Tuesday, the 27th of July, when they would have taken one of the large river steamers for New- York. But his business prevented his leaving upon that day, and it was postponed to Wednesday, the 28th of July, on which day only the two smaller boats, the " Henry Clay " and the " Armenia" were running. Upon reaching the wharf, Mr. and Mrs. Downing met her mother, Mrs. De Wint, with her youngest son and daughter, and the lady who had been pointed out as the heroine of a tragedy. But this morning she was as sunny as the day, which was one of the loveliest of summer. The two steamers were already in sight, coming down the river, and there was a little discussion in the party as to which they would take. But the " Henry Clay " was the largest and reached the wharf first. Mr. Downing and his party embarked, and soon perceived that the two boats were desperately racing. The circumstance was, however, too common to excite any apprehension in the minds of the party, or even to occasion remark. They sat upon the deck enjoying the graceful shores that fled by them — a picture on the air. Mr. Downing was engaged in lively talk with his companion, who had never been to Newport and was very curious to see and share its brilliant life. They had dined, and the boat was within twenty miles of New- York, in a broad reach of the river between the Palisades and the town of Yonkers, when Mrs. Down- liv MEMOIR. ing observed a slight smoke blowing toward them from the centre of the boat. She spoke of it, rose, and said they had better go into the cabin. Her husband replied, no, that they were as safe where they then were as any where. Mrs. Downing, however, went into the cabin where her mother was sitting, knitting, with her daughter by her side. There was little time to say any thing. The smoke rapidly increased ; all who could reach it hurried into the cabin. The thickening smoke poured in after the crowd, who were nearly suffocated. The dense mass choked the door, and Mr. Down- ing's party instinctively rushed to the cabin windows to escape. They chmbed through them to the narrow pas- sage between the cabin and the bulwarks of the boat, the crowd pressing heavily, shouting, crying, despairing, and suffocating in the smoke that now fell upon them in black clouds. Suddenly Mr. Downing said, " They are running her ashore, and we shall all be taken off." He led them round to the stern of the boat, thinking to escape more readily from the other side, but there saw a person upon the shore waving them back, so they returned to their former place. The flames began now to crackle and roar as they crept along the woodwork from the boiler, and the pressure of the throng toward the stern was frightful. Mr. Downing was seen by his wife to step upon the railing, with his coat tightly buttoned, read)'' for a spring upon the upper deck. At that moment she was borne away by the crowd and saw him no more. Their friend, who had been conyersing with Mr. Downing, was calm but pale with alarm. " What will become of us ? " said one of these women, in this frightful extremity of peril, as they held each other's hands and were removed from all human help. " May God have mercy upon us," answered the other. MEMOIE. Iv Ux^on the instant they were separated by the swaying crowd, hut Mrs. Downing still kept near her mother, and sister, and brother. The flames were now within three yards of them, and her brother said, " We must get over- board." Yet she still held some books and a parasol in her hand, not yet able to believe that this was Death creep- ing along the deck. She turned and looked for her hus- band. She could not see him and called his name. Her voice was lost in that wild whiii and chaos of frenzied de- spair, and her brother again said to her, " You must get overboard." In that moment the daughter looked upon the mother — the mother, who had said to her daughter's husband when he asked her hand, " She has been the comfort of her mother's heart, and the solace of her hours," and she saw that her mother's face was " full of the terrible re- ality and inevitable necessity " that awaited them. The crowd choked them, the flames darted toward them ; the brother helped them upon the railing and they leaped into the water. Mrs. Downing stretched out her hands, and grasped two chairs that floated near her, and lying quietly upon her back, was buoyed up by the chairs ; then seizing an- other that was passing her, and holding two in one hand and one in the other, she floated away from the smoking and blazing wreck, from the shrieking and drowning crowd, past the stern of the boat that lay head in to the shore, past the blackened fragments, away from the roaring death struggle into the calm water of the river, calling upon God to save her. She could see the burning boat below her, three hundred yards, perhaps, but the tide was coming in, and after floating some little distance up the river, a current turned her directly toward the shore. Where the water was yet too deep for her to stand, she was grasped by a Ivi MEMOIR. man, drawn toward the Lank, and there, finding that she could stand, she was led out of the water by two men. With the rest of the bewildered, horror-stunned people, she walked up and down the margin of the river looking for her husband. Her brother and sister met her as she walked here — a meeting more sad than joyful. Still the husband did not come, nor the mother, nor that friend who had implored the mercy of God. Mrs. Downing was sure that her husband was safe. He had come ashore above — he was still floating somewhere — ^he had been pick- ed up — he had swam out to some sloop in the river — he was busy rescuing the drowning — he was doing his duty somewhere — he could not be lost. She was persuaded into a little house, where she sat at a window until nightfall, watching the wreck and the con- fusion. Then she was taken home upon the railroad. The neighbors and friends came to her to pass the night. They sat partly in the house and partly stood watching at the door and upon the piazza, waiting for news from the mes- sengers who came constantly from the wreck. Mr. Vaux and others left directly for the wreck, and remained there until the end. The wife clung to her hope, but lay very ill, in the care of the physician. The day dawned over that blighted garden, and in the afternoon they told her that the body of her husband had been found, and they were bringing it home. A young woman who had been saved from the wreck and sat trembHng in the house, then said what until then it had been impossible for her to say, that, at the last moment, Mr. Downing had told her how to sustain herself in the water, but that before she was compelled to leap, she saw him struggling in the river with his friend and others clinging to him. Then she heard him utter a prayer to God, and saw him no more. MEMOIR. ]V11 Another had seen him uj)on the upper deck, probably just after his wife lost sight of him, throwing chairs into the river to serve as suj^ports ; nor is it too improbable that the chairs upon wliich liis wife floated to shore were among those he had so thoughtfully provided. In the afternoon, they brought liim home, and laid him in his hbrary. A terrific storm burst over the river and crashed among the hills, and the wild sympathy of nature surrounded that blasted home. But its master lay serene in the peace of the last ]3rayer he uttered. Loving hands had woven garlands of the fragrant blossoms of the Cape jessamine, the sweet clematis, and the royal roses he loved so well. The next morning was calm and bright, and he was laid in the graveyard, where his father and mother lie. The quiet Fishkill mountains, that won the love of the shy boy in the garden, now watch the grave of the man, who was buried, not yet thirty-seven years old, but with great duties done in this world, and with firm faith in the divine goodness. " Unwatch'd, the garden bougli shall sway, The tender blossom flutter down, Unloved, that beech will gather brown, This maple burn itself aAvay ; " Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair Eay round with flame her disk of seed, And many a rose-carnation feed With summer spice the humming air. " Unloved, by many a sandy bar The brook shall babble down the plain, At noon, or when the lesser wain Is twisting round the polar star ; " Uncared for, gird the windy grove. And flood the haunts of hern and crake ; Iviii Or into silver arrows break, The sailing moon in creek and cove ; " Till from the garden and the wild, A fresh association blow, . And year by year, the landscape grow Familiar to the stranger''s child ; " As, year by year, the laborer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades ; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the hills." A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. TO THE FRIENDS OF A. J. DOWNING, \ Stockholm, November, 1852. HEKE, before me, are tlie pages on which a noble and refined spirit has breathed his mind. He is gone, he breathes no more on earth to adorn and ennoble it ; but in these pages his mind still speaks to us — his eye, his discerning spirit still guides and directs us. Thank God, there is immortality even on earth ! Thank God, the work of the good, the word of the noble and intelligent, has in it seeds of eternal growth ! Friends of my friend, let us rejoice, while we weep, that we still have so much of him left, so much of him with us, to learn by, to beautify our homes, our loves, our lives ! Let us be thankful that we can turn to these j)ages, which bear his words and works, and again there enjoy his conversation — the peculiar glances of his mind and eye at the objects of life ; let us thank the Giver of all good things for the gift of such a mind as his to this imperfect world ; for he understood and knew the perfect, and worked for perfection wherever his word or work could reach. But not as that personage ascribed to Shakspeare, to whom it is said : " You seem to me somewhat surly and critical," Ixii A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. and who answers, "It is that I have early seen the perfect beauty." Our friend had — even he — early seen the perfect beau- ty, but he was not surly when he saw what was not so. His criticism, unflinching as was his eye, looked upon things imperfect or mistaken with a quiet rebuke, more of commiseration than of scorn. A smile of gentle, good- humored sarcasm, or a simple, earnest statement of the truth, were his modes of condemnation, and the beauty of the Ideal and his faith in its power would, as a heavenly light, pierce through his frown. So the real diamond will, by a ray of supeiior power, criticize the false one, and make it darken and shrink into notliingness. Oh ! let me speak of my friend to you, liis friends, though you saw him more and knew him for a longer time than I, the stranger, who came to his home and went, as a passing bird. Let me speak of liim to you, for, though you saw him more and knew him longer, I loved him bet- ter than aU, save one — the sweet wife who made aU his days days of peace and pleasantness. And the eye of love is clairvoyant. Let me plead also with you my right as a stranger; for the stranger comes to a new world with fresh eyes, as those accustomed to snowy chmates would be more alive to the peculiar beauty of tropical life, than those who see it every day. And it was so that, when I saw him, our departed friend, I became aware of a kind of individual beauty and finish, that I had little anticipated to find in the New World, and indeed, had never seen before, any where. At war with the elegant refinements and beauties of life, to which I was secretly bound by strong sympatliies, but which I looked upon as Samson should have looked upon Delilah, and in love with the ascetic severities of life, with A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. Ixiii St. John and St. Theresa, — I used to have a Httle pride in my disdain of tilings that the greater part of the world look upon as most desirable. Still, I could not but believe that tilings beautiful and refined — yea, even the luxuries of life, had a right to citizenship in the kingdom of God. And I had said to myself, as the young Quakeress said to her mother, when reproached by her for seeking more the gayeties of this world than the tilings made of God ; " He made the flowers and the raiubow." But again, the saints and the Puritans after them, had said, " Beauty is Temptation," and so it has been at all times. When I came to the New World, I was met on the shore by A. J. Downing, who had invited me to his house. By some of his books that I had seen, as well as by his let- ters, I knew him to be a man of a refined and noble mind. When- 1 saw him, I was struck, as we are by a natural ob- ject of uncommon cast or beauty. He took me gently by the hand, and led me to his home. That he became to me as a brother, — that his discerning eye and mind guided my imtutored spirit with a careless grace, but not the less im- pressively, to look upon things and persons most influential and leading in the formation of the life and mind of the people of the United States, was much to me ; that he became to me a charming friend, whose care and attention followed me every where during my pilgrimage, — that he made a new summer life, rich with the charm of America's Indian summer, come in my heart, though the affection w\.i\\ which he inspired me, was much to me ; yet what was still more, was, that in him I learned to understand a new nature, and through him, to appreciate a new realm of Ufe. Ixiv A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. You will understand this easily from what I have just stated, and when you think of him, and look on these pages where he has written down his individual mind ; for if ever writer incarnated his very nature in his work, truly and entirely, it was done by A. J. Downing. And if his words and works have won authority all over the United States, wherever the mind of the people has risen to the sphere of intelligence and beauty ; if under the snowy roofs of Concord in the Pilgrim State, as under the orange and oak groves of South Carolina, I heard the same words — " Mr. Downing has done much for this countiy ;" if even in other countries I hear the same appreciation of his works, and not a single contradiction ; it is that his peculiar nature and talent were so one and whole, so in one gush out of the hand of the Creator, that he won authority and faith by the force of those primeval laws to which we bow by a divine necessity as we recognize in them the mark of divine truth. God had given to our friend to understand the true beauty ; Christianity had elevated the moral standard of his mind ; the spirit of the New World had breathed on him its enlarging influence ; and so he became a judge of beau- ty in a new sense. The beauty that he saw, that inspired him, was no more the Venus Anadyomene of the heathen world still living on through all ages, even in the Christian one, mingling the false with the true and carrying abomi- nations under her golden mantle. It was the Venus Ura- nia, radiant with the pure glory of the Virgin, mother of divinity on earth. The beauty that inspired him was in accordance with all that was true and good, nor would he ever see the first severed from the two others. It was the beauty at home in the Kingdom of God. In Mr. Downing's home on the Hudson I was impressed A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. Ixv with the chastity in forms and colors, as well as vdth the perfect grace and nobleness even in the slightest things. A soul, a pure and elevated soul, seemed to have breathed through them, and modelled them to expressions of its in- nermost life and taste. How earnest was the home-spirit breathing throughout the house and in every thing there, and yet how cheerful, how calm, and yet how full of life ; how silent and yet how suggestive, how full of noble teaching ! When I saw the master of the house in the quiet of his home, in every day life, I ceased to think of his art, but I began to admire his nature. And his slight words, his smile, even his silence, became to me as revelations of new truths. You must see it also, you must recognize it in these pages, through which he still speaks to us ; you must recognize in them a special gift, a power of inspired, not acquired, kind ; what is acquired, others may acquire also, but what is given by the grace of God is the exclu- sive property of the favored one. When I saw how my friend worked, I saw how it was with him. For he worked not as the workman does ; he worked as the lilies in the field, which neither toil nor spin, but unconsciously, smilingly, work out their glorious robes and breathe forth their perfumes. To me it is a labor to write a letter, especially on busi- ness ; he discharged every day, ten or twelve letters, as easily as the wind carries flower-seeds on its wings over the land. He never spoke of business — of having much to do ; he never seemed to have much to do. With a careless ease and grace, belonging naturally to him, he did many things as if they were nothing, and had plenty of leisure and pleasantness for his friends. He seemed quietly and Ixvd A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. joyfully, without .any effort, to breathe forth the life and light given him. It was his nature. In a flower-pot ar- ranged by his hand, there was a silent lecture on true taste, applicable to all objects and arrangements in life. His shght and delicately formed hand, " la main ame," as Vi- comte d'Agincourt would have named it, could not touch things to arrange them without giving them a soul of beauty. Though commonly silent and retired, there was in his very presence something that made you feel a secret influ- ence, a secret speaking, in appreciation or in criticism — that made you feel that the Judge was there ; yea, though kind and benevolent, still the Judge, severe to the thing, the expression, though indulgent to the individual. Often when travelling with him on his beloved Hudson, and in deep silence sitting by his side, a glance of his eye, a smile, half melancholy, half arch, would direct my looks to some curious things passing, or some words would break the si- lence, slightly spoken, without accent, yet with meaning and power enough never to be forgotten. His appre- ciation of things always touched the characteristic points. He could not help it, it was his nature. And so, while I became impressed with that nature, as a peculiar finished work of God, and the true spirit and aim of the refinements and graces of civilized life became through him more clear to me, I felt a very great joy to see that the New World — the world of my hopes — had in him a leading mind, through which its realm of beauty might rise out of the old heathenish chaos and ghttering falsities, to the pure region where beauty is connected with what is chaste, and noble, and dignified in every form and application. A new conception of beauty and refinement, in all A LETTEll FROM MISS BREMER. Ixvii realms of life, belongs to the New World, the new home of the people of peoples, and it was given through A. J. Downing. I am not sure of being right in my observation, but it seemed to me that in the course of no long time, the mind of my friend had undergone a change in some views that to me seem of importance. When I knew him at first he seemed to me a little too exclusive, a little aristocratic, as I even told him, and used to taunt him with, half in earn- est, half in play — and we had about that theme some skir- misliings, just good to stir up a fresh breeze over the smooth waters of daily life and intercourse. I thought that he still wanted a baptizing of a more Christian, republican spirit. Later I thought the baptizing had come, gentle and pure as heavenly dew. And before my leaving America I enjoyed to see the soul of my friend rise, expand, and become more and more enlarged and universal. It could not be otherwise, a soul so gifted must scatter its divine gifts as the sun its rays, and the flower its seeds, over the whole land, for the whole people, for one and for all. The good and gifted man would not else be a true repubHcan. It was with heartfelt deHght that I, on my last visit to the home of my friend, did read in the August number of the Horticulturist these words in- a leading article by him, on the New- York Park. " Social doubters, who intrench themselves in the cit- adel of exclusiveness in republican America, mistake our people and its destiny. If we would but have listened to them, our magnificent river and lake steamers, those real palaces of the million, would have no velvet couches, no splendid mirrors, no luxurious carpets ; such costly and rare appliances of civiHzation, they would have told us, could only be rightly used by the privileged families of Ixviii A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. wealth, and would be trampled upon and utterly ruined by the democracy of the country, who travel one hundred miles for half a dollar. And yet these our floating palaces, and our monster hotels, with their purple and fine linen, are they not respected by the majority who use them as truly as other palaces by their rightful sovereigns ? Alas^ for the faithlessness of the few who possess, regarding the capacity for culture of the many who are wanting. " Even upon the lower platform of liberty and education that the masses stand in Europe, we see the elevating influ- ences of a wide popular enjoyment of galleries of art, pub- lic libraries, parks and gardens, which have raised the peo- ple in social civilization and social culture, to a far higher level than we have yet attained in republican America. And yet this broad ground of jiopular refinement must be taken in republican America, for it belongs of right more truly here than elsewhere. It is republican in its very idea and tendency. It takes up pojjular education where the common school and baUot-box leave it, and raises up the working man to the same level of enjoyment with the man of leisure and accomplishment. The higher social and artistic elements of every man's "nature lie dormant within him, and every laborer is a possible gentleman ; not by the possession of money or fine clothes, but through the refin- ing influence of intelligent and moral culture. Open wide therefore the doors of your libraries and picture-galleries, all ye true republicans ! Build halls where knowledge shall be freely diffused among men, and not shut up within the narrow walls of narrower institutions. Plant spacious parks in your cities, and unloose their gates as wide as the gates of the morning, to the whole peoi3le. As there are no dark places at noonday, so education and culture — the true sun- shine of the soul — will banish the plague-spots of democ- A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. Ixix racy ; and the dread of the ignorant exclusive who has no fliith in the refinement of a republic, will stand abashed in the next century, before a whole peoi^le whose system of voluntary education embraces (combined with perfect indi- vidual freedom) not only common schools and rudimentary knowledge, but common enjoyments for all classes in the higher realms of art, letters, science, social recreations and enjoyments. Were our legislators wise enough to under- stand to-day the destinies of the New World, the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney made universal, would be not half so much a miracle fifty years hence in America, as the idea of a whole nation of laboring men reading and writing was, in his day, in England." In one of my latest conversations with my friend, as he followed md down to the sea-shore, he spoke with great satisfaction of Miss Cooper's work, " Kural Hours," just published, and expressed again a hope I had heard him express more than once, that the taste for rural science and occupations would more and more be cultivated by the women of America. It was indeed a thing for which I felt most grateful, and that marked my friend as a true American man, namely, the interest he took in the eleva- tion of woman's culture and social influence. His was a mind alive to every thing good and beautiful and true, in every department of life, and he would fain have made them all, and every species of excellence, adorn his native country. Blessed be his words and works, on the soil of the New World. As he was to his stranger friend, so may he be to millions yet to come in his land, a giver of Hesperian fruits, a sure guide thi'ough the wilderness ! IXX A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. When I was in Cuba, I remember being strongly impressed with a beauty of nature and existence, of wliich I liitherto had formed no idea, and that enlarged my conceptions of the realms of nature as well as of art. I remember writing of it to Mr. Downing, saying (if not exactly in the same words, at least to the same pur- port) : " You must come here, my brother, you must see these trees and flowers, these curves and colors, and take into your soul the image of this earthly paradise, while you are still on earth ; and then, when God shall call you to that other world, to be there a gardener of His own, and you will have a star of your own to plant and perfect — as of course you will have — then you will mingle the palms and bamboo groves of Cuba with your own American oaks and elms, and taking models out of the beautiful objects of all nature and all climates, you will build houses and temples of which even ' The Seven Lamps of Architecture ' give but distant ideas. You will build a cathedral, where every plant and every creature will be as a link rising upwards, joining in one harmonious Apocalypse revealing the glory of the Creator," And now, when the call has come, and my friend is taken away, and much of the charm of tins world is taken from me ■with him, I solace my fancy with the vision I thus anticipated. I see my friend working in some more perfect world, out of more perfect matter, the ideas of beauty and perfection which were life of his life, so to make it a fit abode for pure and heavenly spirits. Why should it not be so ? I think it must be so, as God's gifts are of immortal cost as well as the individual spirit to whom they were given. Is not all that is beauti- ful in nature, true and charming in art, based upon laws A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. Ixxi and affinities as eternal as the Spirit which recognizes them ? Are these laws not manifested through the whole universe, from planet to planet, from sun to sun ? Verily, the immortal Spirit will ever reproduce its in- ward world, even if the scene of action is changed, and the stuff for working is changed. Every man will, as it was said by the prophet of old, " awake in his oivn part, when the days (of sublunary life) will be ended ! " I know that in my final hopes beyond this world, I shall look forward in prayer and hope, to a home among trees and flowers planted by the hand of my friend, there to see him again and with him to explore a new world — with him to adore ! FREDEKIKA BREMER. HORTICULTURE. HORTICULTUEE. I. INTRODUCTORY. July, 1846. BRIGHT and beautiful June! Embroidered with clusters of odorous roses, and laden with ruddy cherries and strawberries ; rich with the freshness of spring, and the luxuriance of summer, — leafy June ! K any one's heart does not swell with the unwritten thoughts that belong to this season, then is he only fit for " treasons, stratagems and spoils." He does not practically believe that " God made the country ^^ Flora and Pomona, from amid the blossoming gardens and orchards of June, smile graciously as we write these few intro- ductory words to their circle of devotees. Happy are we to know that it is not to us a new or strange circle, but to feel that large numbers of our readers are already congenial and familiar spirits. Angry volumes of politics have we written none; but peaceful books, humbly aiming to weave something more into the fair gar- land of the "beautiful and useful, that encircles this excellent old Earth. To the thousands, who have kindly made our rural volumes part of their household library, we offer this new production, which be- gins to unfold itself now, in the midsummer of the year. In its pages, from month to month, we shall give them a collection of all 4 HORTICULTURE. that can most interest those whose feelings are firmly rooted in the soil, and its kindred avocations. The garden and the orchard ; the hot-house and the conservatory ; the park and the pleasure-grounds ; all, if. we can read them rightly, shall be made to preach useful lessons in our pages. All fruitful and luxuriant grounds shall we revel in, and delight to honor. Blooming trees, and fruitful vines, we shall open our lips to praise. And if nature has been over-par- tial to any one part of the globe, either in good gardens, fair flowers, or good fruits, — -if she has any where lavished secret vegetable trea- sures that our cultivators have not yet made prizes of, we promise our readers to watch closely, and to give a faithful account of them. Skilful cultivators promise to make these sheets the repository of their knowledge. Sound practice, and ingenious theory will be con- tinually developed and illustrated. The humblest cottage kitchen garden, as well as the most extended pleasure-grounds, Avill occupy the attention of the pens in our service. Beautiful flowers shall picture themselves in our columns, till even our sterner utilitarians shall be tempted to admire and cultivate them ; and the honeyed, juicy gifts of Pomona shall be treated of till every one who reads shall discover that the most delicious products of our soil are no longer forbidden fruits. Fewer, perhaps, are there, who have watched as closely as our- selves the zeal and enthusiasm which the last five years have begotten in American Horticulture. Every where, on both sides of the Alleghanies, are our friends rapidly turning the fertile soil into luxuriant gardens, and crying out loudly for more light and niore' knowledge. Already do the readers of rural works in the United States number more than in any cisatlantic country, except garden- ing England. Already do our orchards cover more acres than those of any other country. Already are the banks of the Ohio becoming femous for their delicate wines. Already are the suburbs of our cities, and the banks of our broad and picturesque rivers, studded with the tasteful villa and cottage, where a charming taste in ornamental gardening is rapidly developing itself. The patient toil of the pioneer and settler has no sooner fairly ceased, than our people begin to enter with the same zeal and spirit into the refine- ments and enjoyments which belong to a country life, and a country INTRODUCTORY. home. A fortunate range of climate — lands fertile and easily acquired, tempt persons even of little means and leisure into the delights of gardening. Where peaches and melons, the richest fruits of the tropics, are raised without walls — where apples and pears, the pride of the temperate zones, are often grown with little more than the trouble of planting them — who would not be tempted to join in the enthusiasm of the exclamation, "Allons mes amis, il faut cultiver nos jardins." Behold us then, with all this growing zeal of our countrymen for our beautiful and favorite art, unable to resist the temptation of commencing new labors in its behalf Whatever our own feeble eflforts can achieve, whatever our more intelligent correspondents can accomplish, shall be done to render worthy this monthly record of the progress of horticulture and its kindred pursuits. If it is a laudable ambition to " make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before," we shall hope for the encouragement, and assistance, and sympathy of all those who would see our vast territory made smiling with gardens, and rich in all that makes one's country worth living and dying for. II. HINTS ON FLOWER-GARDENS. April, 1847. WE are once more unlocked from the chilling embraces of the Ice-King! April, full of soft airs, balm -dropping showers, and fitful gleams of sunshine, brings life and animation to the mil- lions of embryo leaves and blossoms, that, quietly folded up in the bud, have slept the mesmeric sleep of a northern winter — April, that first gives us of the Northern States our proper spring flowers, which seem to succeed almost by magic to the barrenness of the month gone by. A few pale snowdrops, sun-bright crocuses, and timidly blushing mezereums, have already gladdened us, like the few faint bars of golden and ruddy light that usher in the full radi- ance of sunrise ; but April scatters in her train as she goes out, the fii'st richness and beauty that really belong to a temperate spiing. Hyacinths, and daffodils, and violets, bespread her lap and fill the air with fragrance, and the husbandman beholds with joy his orchards gay with the thousand blossoms — beautiful harbingers of luscious and abundant crops. All this resurrection of sweetness and beauty, inspires us with a desire to look into the Flower- Garden, and to say a few words about it and the flowers themselves. We trust there are none of " our parish," who, though they may not make flower-gardens, can turn away with impatient or unsympathizing hearts from flowers themselves. If there are such, we must, at the very threshhold of the matter, borrow a homily for them from that pure and eloquent preacher, Mary Howitt : HINTS ON FLOWER-GARDENS. *J " God might have made the earth bi-ing forth Enough for great and small, The oak tree and the cedar tree, Without a flower at all. " Our outward life requires them not — Then wherefore had they birth ? To minister delight to man, To beautify the earth. "To comfort man, to whisper hope Whene'er his faith is dim ; For who so careth for the flowers, Will much more care for him ! " Now, there are many genuine lovers of flowei's who have at- tempted to make flower-gardens — in the simphcity of their hearts beHe\dng it to be the easiest thing in the world to arrange so many beautiful annuals and perennials into " a living knot of wonders " — who have quite failed in realizing all that they conceived of and fairly expected when they first set about it. It is easy enough to draw upon paper a pleasing plan of a flower-garden, whether in the geometric J or the natural, or the '■'■ c/ardenesque ^'' style, that shall satisfy the eye of the beholder. But it is far more difiicult to plant and arrange a garden of this kind in such a way as to afford a constant succession of beauty, both in blossom and leaf Indeed, among the hundreds of avowed flower-gardens which we have seen in different parts of the country, public and private, we cannot name half-a-dozen which are in any considerable degree satisfactory. The two leading faults in all our flower-gardens, are the want of lirojicr selection in the plants themselves, and a faulty arrange- ment, by which as much surface of bare soil meets the eye as is clothed with verdure and blossoms. Regarding the first effect, it seems to us that the entire beauty of a flower-garden almost depends upon it. However elegant or striking may be the design of a garden, that design is made poor or valueless, when it is badly planted so as to conceal its merits, or filled with a selection of unsuitable plants, which, from their coarse or ragged habit of growth, or their remaining in bloom but a short .IB HORTICULTURE. time, give the whole a confused and meagre effect. A flower-gar- den, deserving the name, should, if jjossible, be as rich as a piece of embroidery, during the whole summer and autumn. In a botan- ical gai'den, or the collection of a curious amateur, one expects to see variety of species, plants of all known forms, at the expense of every thing else. But in a flower-garden, properly so called, the whole object of which is to afford a continual display of beautiful colors and delicious odors, we conceive that every thing should be rejected (or only most sparingly introduced), which does not com- bine almost perpetual blooming, with neat and agreeable habit of growth. The passion for novelty and variety among the lovers of flowers, is as great as in any other enthusiasts. But as some of the greatest of the old painters are said to owe the success of their master- pieces to the few colors they employed, so we are confident the most beautiful flower-gardens are those where but few sjiecies are intro- duced, and those only such as possess the important qualities we have alluded to. Thus among flowering shrubs, taking for illustration the tribe of Roses, we would reject, in our choice flower-garden, nearly all the old class of roses, which are in bloom for a few days and but once a year, and exhibit during the rest of the season, for the most part, meagre stems and dingy foliage. We would supply their jjlace by Bourbons, Perpetuals, Bengals, etc., roses which offer an abundance of blossoms and fine fresh foliage during the whole growing season. Among annuals, we would reject every thing short-lived, and intro- duce only those like the Portulaccas, Verbenas, Petunias, Mignon- ette, Phlox Drummondii, and the like, which are always in bloom, and fresh and pretty in habit.* After this we would add to the effect of our selection of pei-pet- ual blooming plants, by abandoning altogether the old method of interminrjling species and varieties of all colors and habits of growth, * Some of the most beautiful of the perpetual blooming plants for the flower-garden, are the Salvia.i, Bouvardias, Scarlet Geraniums, <&c., propei'ly green-house plants, and requiring protection in a pit or warm cellar in win ten " Bedded out " in May, they form rich flowing masses till the frosts of autumn. HINTS ON FLOWER-GARDENS. 9 and substitute for it the opposite mode of grouping or massing colors and particular species of plants, Masses of crimson and white, of yellow and purple, and the other colors and shades, brought boldly into contrast, or disposed so as to form an agi-eeable harmony, will attract the eye, and make a much more forcible and delightful im- pression, than can ever be produced by a confused mixture of shades and colors, nowhere distinct enough to give any decided effect to the whole. The effect of thus collecting masses of colors in a flower- garden in this way, is to give it what the painters call breadth of effect^ which in the other mode is entirely frittered away and de- stroyed. This arranging plants in patches or masses, each composed of the same species, also contributes to do away in a great degree with the second fault which we have alluded to as a grievous one in most of our flower-gardens — that of the exhibition of bai'e surface of soil — parts of beds not covered by foliage and flowers. In a hot climate, like that of our summers, nothing is more un- pleasing to the eyes or more destructive to that expression of soft- ness, verdure, and gayety, that should exist in the flower-garden, than to behold the surface of the soil in any of the beds or parterres un- clothed with plants. The dryness and parched appearance of such portions goes far to impair whatever air of freshness and beauty may be imparted by the flowers themselves. Now whenever beds are planted with a heterogeneous mixture of plants, tall and short, spreading and straggling, it is nearly impossible that considerable parts of the surface of the soil should not be visible. On the con- traiy, where species and varieties of plants, chosen for their excel- lent habits of growth and flowering, are planted in masses, almost every part of the surface of the beds may be hidden from the eye, which we consider almost a sine qua non in all good flower-gardens. Following out this principle — on the whole perhaps the most important in all flower-gardens in this country — that there should, if possible, be no bare surface soil visible, our own taste leads us to prefer the modern English style of laying out flower- gardens upon a groundwork of grass or turf, kept scrupulously short. Its advantage over a flower-garden composed only of beds with a narrow edging and gravel walks, consists in the greater soft- 10 HORTICULTURE. ness, freshness and verdure of the green turf, which serves as a set- ting to the flower beds, and heightens the briUiancy of the flowers themselves. Still, both these modes have their merits, and each is best adapted to certain situations, and harmonizes best with its ap- propriate scenery. There are two other defects in many of our flower-gardens, easily remedied, and about which we must say a word or two in passing. One of these is the common practice, brought over here by gardeners from England, of forming raised convex beds for flowering plants. This is a very unmeaning and injurious practice in this country, as a moment's reference to the philosophy of the thing will convince any one. In a damp climate, like that of England, a bed with a high convex surface, by throwing oft' the superfluous water, keeps the plants from suffering by excess of wet, and the form is an excellent one. In this country, where most frequently our flower-gardens fail from drouth, what sound reason can be given for forming the beds with a raised and rounded surface of six inches in eveiy three feet, so as to throw off four-fifths of every shower ? The true mode, as a little reflection and experience will convince any one, is to form the surface of the bed nearly level, so that it may retain its due proportion of the rains that fall. Next to this is the defect of not keeping the walks in flower- gardens full of gravel. In many instances that we could name, the level of the gravel in the walk is six inches below that of the adjoining bed or border of turf. This gives a harsh and ditch-like character to the walks, quite at variance with the smoothness and perfection of details which ought especially to characterize so ele- , gant a portion of the grounds as this in question. " Keep the walks brimful of gravel," was one of the maxims most strongly insisted on by the late Mr. Loudon, and one to which we fully subscribe. We insert here a copy of the plan of the celebrated flower-gar- den of Baron Von Hugel, near Vienna. This gentleman is one of the most enthusiastic devotees to Horticulture in Germany. In the Algemeine Garten Zeittmg, a detailed account is given, by the Se- cretary of the Imperial Horticultural Society of Vienna, of the resi- dence and grounds of the Baron, from which we gather that they The Roccoco Garden of Baron Hugel, near Vienna. HINTS ON FLOWER-GARDENS. 11 are not surpassed in the richness and variety of their botanical trea- sures by any private collection on the Continent. "A forest of Camellias almost makes one believe that he is in Japan." Some of these are 22 feet high, and altogether the collection numbers 1000 varieties. The hot^house devoted to orchids, or air plants, contains 200 varieties, and the various green-houses include equally rich collections of the exotics of various climates. Regarding the Baron's flower-garden itself, we quote the words of M. Peinter. " But still another most delightful scene is reserved, which is a mosaic picture of flowers, a so-called Rococo garden. We have to thank Baron Von Iliigel for giving the first example of a style, since pretty largely copied, both here and in the adjacent country. A garden, laid out in this manner, demands much cleverness and skill in the gardener, both in the choice and the arrangement of the flowers. He must also take care that, during the whole summer, there are no portions destitute of flowering plants. It is but justice to the Baron's head gardener, to aflSrm that he has completely ac- complished this task, and has been entirely successful in carrying- out the design or purjiose of this garden. The connoisseur does not indeed see the usual collection of ornamental plants in this sea of flowers, but a great many varieties ; and, in short, here, as every- where else, the aesthetic taste of the Baron predominates. Beau- tiful is this garden within a garden, and hence it has become the model garden of Austria. Around it the most charming landscape opens to the view, gently swelling hills, interspersed with pretty villages, gardens and grounds." In the plan of the garden, a and b are masses of shrubs ; c, circular beds, separated by a border or belt of turf, e, from the ser- pentine bed, d. The whole of this running pattern is surrounded by a border of turf, /; ff and h are gravel walks ; ^, beds, with pedestal and statue in the centre ; k, small oval beds, separated from the bed, I, by a border of turf"; m, w, o, p, irregular or arabesque beds, set in turf. As a good deal of the interest of such a flower-garden as this, depends on the plan itself, it is e\adent that the beds should be filled with groups or masses, composed mostly of low growing flowers, as tall ones would interfere with, or break up its effect as 12 HORTICULTURE. a whole. Mr. Loudon, in some criticisms on this garden, in the Gardener's Magazine^ says, that the running chain pattern of beds, which forms the outer border to the design, was originated in Eng- land, by the Duchess of Bedford, about the year 1800. "It is," he remarks, " capable of producing a very brilliant effect, by plant- ing the circular beds, c, with bright colors, each alternating with white. For example, beginning at c, and proceeding to the right, we might have dark red, white, blue, ivhite, yellow, white, scarlet, white, purple, white, and so on. The interlacing beds, d, might be planted on exactly the same principle, but omitting white. Pro- c;eeding to the right from the bed, d, which may be yellow, the next may be crimson, the next purple, the next orange, and so on." This plan is by no means faultless, yet as it is admirably planted with ever-blooming flowers, and kept in the highest order, it is said to attract universal admiration, and is worthy of the examination of om- floral friends. We should imagine it much inferior, in design and general effect, to the very beautiful new flower-garden at Montgomerij Place, the seat of Mrs. Edward Li\dngston, on the Hudson, which is about double its size, and is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and most tastefully managed examples of a flower- garden in America. III. INFLUENCE OF HORTICULTURE. July, 1847. THE multiplication of Horticultural Societies is taking place so rapidly of late, in various parts of the country, as to lead one to reflect somewhat on their influence, and that of the art they foster, upon the character of our people. Most persons, no doubt, look upon them as performing a work of some usefulness and elegance, by promoting the culture of fruits and flowers, and introducing to all parts of the country the finer species of vegetable productions. In other words, they are thought to add very considerably to the amount of physical gratifications which every American citizen endeavors, and has a right to endea- vor, to assemble around him. Granting all the foregoing, we are inclined to claim also, for horticultural pursuits, a political and moral influence vastly more significant and important than the mere gratification of the senses. We think, then, in a few words, that Horticulture and its kindred arts, tend strongly to fix the habits, and elevate the character, of our whole rural population. One does not need to be much of a philosopher to remark that one of the most striking of our national traits, is the spirit of unrest. It is the grand energetic element which leads us to clear vast forests, and settle new States, with a rapidity unparalleled in the world's histoiy ; the spirit, possessed with which, our yet comparatively scanty people do not find elbow-room enough in a territory already in their possession, and vast enough to hold the greatest of ancient 14 HORTICULTURE. empires ; whicli drives the emigrant's wagon across vast sandy de- serts to California, and over Rocky Mountains to Oregon and the Pacific ; which builds up a great State like Ohio in 30 years, so populous, civilized and productive, that the bare recital of its growth sounds like a genuine miracle to European ears ; and which over- runs and takes possession of a whole empire, like that of Mexico, while the cabinets of old monarchies are debating whether or not it is necessary to interfere and restore the balance of power in the new world as in the old. This is the grand and exciting side of the picture. Turn it in an- other light, and study it, and the effect is by no means so agreeable to the reflective mind. The spirit of unrest, followed into the bosom of society, makes of man a feverish being, in whose Tantalus' cup repose is the unattainable drop. Unable to take root any where, he leads, socially and physically, the uncertain life of a tree transplanted from place to place, and shifted to a different soil every season. It has been shrewdly said that what qualities we do not possess, are always in our mouths. Our countrymen, it seems to us, are fonder of no one Anglo-Saxon word than the term settle* It was the great object of our forefathers to find a proper spot to settle. Every year, large numbers of our population from the older States go west to settle ; while those already \ye?,i,pull up, with a kind of desperate joy, their yet new-set stakes, and go farther west to settle again. So truly national is the word, that all the business of the country, from State debts to the products of a " truck farm," are not satisfactorily adjusted till they are " settled ; " and no sooner is a passenger fairly on board one of our river steamers, than he is politely and emphatically invited by a sable representative of its executive power, to " call at the captain's office and settle ! " Yet, as a people, we are never settled. It is one of the first points that strikes a citizen of the old world, where something of the dignity of repose, as well as the value of action, enters into their ideal of life. De Tocqueville says, in speaking of our national trait : * Anglo-Saxon sath-lian, from the verb settan, to set^ to cease from mo- tion, to fix a dwelling-place, to repose, etc. INFLUENCE OF HORTICULTURE. 15 " At first sight, there is something surprising in this strange un- rest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance. The spectacle itself is, however, as old as the world. The novelty is to see a whole 'people furnish an exemplification of it. " In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in, and sells it before the roof is on ; he brings a field into tillage, and leave other men to gather the crops ; he embraces a profession, and gives it up ; he settles in a place, which he soon after leaves, in order to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics ; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor, he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days, to shake off his happiness." Much as. we admire the energy of our people, we value no less the love of order, the obedience to law, the security and repose of society, the love of home, and the partiality to localities endeared by birth or association, of which it is in some degree the antagonist. And we are therefore deeply convinced that whatever tends, without checking due energy of character, but to develops along with it certain \4rtues that will keep it within due bounds, may be looked upon as a boon to the nation. Now the difference between the son of Ishmael, who lives in tents, and that man who has the strongest attachment to the home of his fathers, is, in the beginning, one mainly of outward circum- stances. He whose sole property is a tent and a camel, whose ties to one spot are no stronger than the cords which confine his habita- tion to the sandy floor of the desert, who can break up his encamp- ment at an hour's notice, and choose a new and equally agreeable site, fifty miles distant, the next day — such a person is very little likely to become much more strongly attached to any one spot of earth than another. The condition of a western emigrant is not greatly dissimilar. That long covered wagon, which is the Noah's ark of his preserva- tion, is also the concrete essence of house and home to him. He emigrates, he " squats," he " locates," but before he can be fairly said to have a fixed home, the spirit of unrest besets him ; he sells ;h 16 HORTICULTURE. his " digging " to some less adventurous pioneer, and tackling the wagon of the wilderness, migrates once more. It must not be supposed, large as is the infusion of restlessness in our people that there are not also large exceptions to the general rule. Else there would never be growing villages and prosperous towns. Nay, it cannot be overlooked by a careful observer, that the tendency "to settle" is slowly but gradually on the increase, and that there is, in all the older portions of the country, growing evidence that the Anglo-Saxon love of home is gradually developing itself out of the Anglo-American love of change. It is not difficult to see how sti'ongly horticulture contributes to the development of local attachments. In it lies the most powerful philtre that civilized man has yet found to charm him to one spot of earth. It transforms what is only a tame meadow and a bleak aspect, into an Eden of interest and delights. It makes all the difterence between "Araby the blest," and a pine barren. It gives a bit of soil, too insignificant to find a place in the geography of the earth's surface, such an importance in the eyes of its possessor, that he finds it more attractive than countless acres of unknown and un- explored "territory." In other words, it contains the mind and soul of the man, materialized in many of the fairest and richest forms of nature, so that he looks upon it as tearing himself up, root and branch, to ask him to move a mile to the right or the left. Do we need to say more, to jirove that it is the panacea that really " settles " mankind ? It is not, therefore, without much pleasurable emotion, that we have had notice lately of the formation of five new Horticultural societies, the last at St. Louis, and most of them west of the Alle- ghanies. Whoever lives to see the end of the next cycle of our race, will see the great valleys of the West the garden of the world ; and we watch with interest the first development, in the midst of the busy fermentation of its active masses, of that beautiful and quiet spirit, of the joint culture of the earth and the heart, that is destined to give a tone to the future character of its untold millions. The increased love of home and the garden, in the older States, is a matter of every -day remark ; and it is not a little curious, that just in proportion to the intelligence and settled character of its popu- INFLUENCE OF HORTICULTURE. 17 lation, is the amount of interest manifested in horticultm'e. Thus, the three most settled of the original States, we suppose to be Massa- chusetts, New- York and Pennsylvania ; and in these States horti- culture is more eagerly pursued than in any others. The first named State has now seven horticultural societies ; the second, seven ; the third, three. Following out the comparison in the cities, we should say that Boston had the most settled population, Philadelphia the next, and New- York the least so of any city in the Union ; and it is well known that the horticultural society of Boston is at this moment the most energetic one in the country, and that it is stimulated by the interest excited by societies in all its neighbor- ing towns. The Philadelphia society is exceedingly prosperous ; while in New- York, we regret to say, that the numerous efibrts that have been made to establish firmly a society of this kind have not, up to this time, resulted in any success whatever. Its mighty tide of people is as yet too much possessed with the spirit of business and of unrest." * * "The New-York Horticultural Society" was oi-ganized in the spring of 1852, and is already in a flourishing condition. — Ed. IV. A TALK WITH FLORA AND POMONA. September, 1847. WE beg leave to inform such of our readers as may be inter- ested, that we have lately had the honor of a personal inter- view with the distinguished deities that preside over the garden and the orchard, Flora and Pomona. The time was a soft balmy August night ; the scene was a leafy nook in our own grounds, where, after the toils of the day, we were enjoying the dolce far niente of a hammock, and wondering at the necessity of any thing fairer or diviner than rural nature, and such moonlight as then filled the vaulted heaven, bathed the tufted fore- ground of trees, the distant purple hills, and " Tipt with silver all the fruit tree tops." It was a scene for an artist ; yet, as we do not write for the Court Journal, we must be pardoned for any little omission in the costumes or equipages of the divinities themselves. Indeed, we were so thoroughly captivated with the immortal candor and freshness of the goddesses, that we find many of the accessories have escaped our memory. Pomona's breath, however, when she spoke, filled the air with the odor of ripe apricots, and she held in her left hand a fruit, which we immediately recognized as one of the golden apples of the Hesperides, (of which she knew any gardener upon earth would give his right hand for a slip,) and which in the course of our interview, she acknowledged was the only sort in the m}i;hological gardens which excels the Newtown Pippin. Her lips had the dewy A TALK WITH FLORA AND POMONA. 19 freshness of the ruddiest strawberries raised by Mr. Longworth's favorite old Cincinnati market woman ; and there was a bright sparkle in her eye, that assured us there is no trouble with the cur- culio in the celestial orchards. But if we were charmed with the ruddy beauty of Pomona, we were still more fascinated by the ideal freshness and gi-ace of Flora. She wore on her head a kind of fanciful crown of roses, which were not only dewy moss roses, of the loveliest shades imaginable, but the colors themselves changed every moment, as she turned her head, in a manner that struck us quite speechless with admiration. The goddess observing this, very graciously remarked that these roses were the true perpetuals, since they not only really bloomed always, but when plucked, they retained their brilliancy and freshness for ever. Her girdle was woven in a kind of green and silver pattern of jas- mine leaves and starry blossoms, but of a species far more lovely than any in Mr. Paxton's Magazine. She held a bouquet in her hand, composed of sweet scented camellias, and violets as dark as sapphire, which she said her gardener had brought from the new planet Neptune ; and unique and fragrant blossoms continually dropped from her robe, as she walked about, or raised her arms in gestures graceful as the swinging of a garland wooed by the west wind. After some stammering on our own part, about the honor con- ferred on an humble mortal like ourselves — rare visits of the god- desses to earth, etc., they, understanding, probably, what Mr. Beecher calls our " amiable fondness for the Hudson," obligingly put us at our ease, by paying us some compliments on the scenery of the Highlands, as seen at that moment from our garden seat, comparing the broad river, radiant with the chaste light of the moon, to some favorite lake owned by the immortals, of whose name, we are sorry to say, we are at this moment entirely oblivious. Our readers will not, of course, expect us to repeat all that passed during this enchanting interview. But, as we are obliged to own that the visit was not altogether on our own behalf, or rather that the turn of the discourse held by our immortal guests showed that it was chiefly intended to be laid before the readers of the Horticul- turist, we lose no time in putting the latter en rapport. 20 HORTICULTURE. Pomona opened the discourse by a few graceful remarks, touch- ing the gratification it gave them that the moderns, down to the present generation, had piously recognized her guardian rights and those of her sister Flora, even while those of many of the other Olympians, such as Jupiter, Pan, Vulcan, and the like, were nearly forgotten. The wonderful fondness for fruits and flowers, growing up in the western world, had, she declared, not escaped her eye, and it received her warmest approbation. She said something that we do not quite remember, in the style of that good old phrase, of " making the wilderness blossom like the rose," and declared that Flora intended to festoon every cottage in America with double Michigan roses. Wistarias, and sweet-scented vines. For her own part, she said, her people were busy enough in their invnsible super- intendence of the orchard planting now going on at such a gigantic rate in America, especially in the Western States. Such was the fever in some of those districts, to get large plantations of fruit, that she could not, for the life of her, induce men to pause long enough to select their ground or the proper sorts of fi'uit to be planted. As a last resort, to keep them a little in check, she was obliged, against her better feelings, to allow the blight to cut off part of an orchard now and then. Otherwise the whole country would be filled up wth poor miserable odds and ends from Europe — "Beurres and Bergamots, with more sound in their French names, than flavor under their skins." These last words, we confess, startled us so much, that we opened our eyes rather widely, and called upon the name of Dr. Van Mons, the great Belgian — spoke of the gratitude of the pomological world, etc. To our surprise, Pomona declared that she had her doubts about the Belgian professor — she said he was a very crotchety man, and although he had devoted his life to her service, yet he had such strange whims and caprices about improving fruits by a regular sys- tem of degeneration or running them out, that she could make nothing of him. " Depend upon it," she said, " many of his sorts are worthless, — most of them have sickly constitutions, and," she added, with some emphasis, snapping her fingers as she spoke, " I would not give one sound healthy seedling pear, springing up under natural culture in your American soil, for all that Dr. Van Mons A TALK WITH FLORA AND POMONA. 21 ever raised ! " [We beg our readers to understand that these were Pomona's words and not ours.] She gave us, after this, very special charge to impress it upon her devotees in the United States, not to be too mucli smitten with the love of new names, and great collec- tions. It gave her more satisfaction to see the orchards and fruit room of one of her liege subjects teeming with the abundance of the few sorts of real golden merit, than to see whole acres of new varie- ties that have no other value than that of novelty. She said too, that it was truly amazing how this passion for collecting fruits — a genuine monomania — grew upon a poor mortal, when he was once attacked by it ; so that indeed, if he could not add every season at least fifty new sorts from the continent, with some such outlandish names, (which she said she would never recognize,) as Beurr6 bleu cfeti nouveau de Scrowsywowsy^ etc., he would positively hang him- self in a fit of the blues ! Pomona further drew our attention in some sly remarks that were half earnest and half satire, to the figure that many of these "Belgian pericarps" cut at those handsome levees, which her vota- ries among us hold in the shape of the great September exhibitions. She said it was really droll to see, at such shows as those of our two large cities, where there was a profusion of ripe and luscious fruit, that she would have been proud of in her own celestial orchards — to see there intermingled some hundred or so mean looking, hard green pears, that never had ripened, or never did, would, or could ripen, so as to be palatable to any but a New Zealander. " Do so- licit my friends there, for the sake of my feelings," said she, " to give the gentlemen who take such pleasure in exhibiting this degenerate foreign squad, a separate 'green room' for themselves." To this remark we smiled and bowed low, though we would not venture to carry out her suggestion for the world. We had a delightful little chat with Flora, about some new plants which she told us grew in certain unknown passes in the Rocky Mountains, and mountainous parts of Mexico, that will prove quite hardy with us, and which neither Mr. Fortune nor the London Horticultural Society know any thing about. But she finally in- formed us, that her real object in making herself visible on the earth at present, with Madam Pomona, was to beg us to enter her 22 HORTICULTURE. formal and decided protest against the style of decorations called after her name, and which had, for several yeai-s past, made the otherwise brilliant Autumnal Horticultural Shows in our quar- ter of the globe so disagreeable an offering to her. " To call the monstrous formations, which, under the name of temples, stars, tri- pods, and obelisks — great bizarre masses of flowers plastered on wooden frames — to call these after her name, ' Floral designs,' was," she said, "even more than the patience of a goddess could bear." If those who make them are sincerely her devoted admirers, as they profess to be, she begged us to say to them, that, unless they had designs upon her flow of youth and spirits, that had hitherto been eternal, she trusted they would hereafter desist. We hereupon ventured to offer some apology for the offending parties, by saying they were mostly the work of the "bone and sinew" of the gardening profession, men with blunt fingei-s but earnest souls, who worked for days upon what they fancied was a worthy offering to be laid upon her altars. She smiled, and said the intention was accepted, but not its results, and hinted something about the same labor being performed under the direction of the more tasteful eye of ladies, who should invent and arrange, while the fingers of honest toil wrought the ruder outline only. Flora then hinted to us, how much more beautiful flowers were when arranged in the simplest forms, and said, when combined or moulded into shapes or devices, nothing more elaborate or arti- ficial than a vase-form is really pleasing. Baskets^ moss-covered and flower-woven, she said, were thought elegant enough for Para- dise itself. " There are not only baskets," continued she, " that are beau- tiful lying down, and showing inside a rich mosaic of flowers — each basket, large or small, devoted perhaps, to some one choice flower in its many varieties ; but baskets on the tops of mossy pedestals, bearing tasteful emblems interwoven on their sides ; and baskets hanging from ceilings, or high festooned arches — in which case they display in the most graceful and becoming manner, all manner of drooping and twining plants, the latter stealing out of the nest or body of the basket, and waving to and fro in the air they perfume." " Then there is the garland,^'' continued ou-r fair guest; "it is quite amazing, that since the days of those clever and A TALK WITH FLORA AND POMONA. 23 harmonious people, the Greeks, no one seems to know any thing of the beauty of the garland. Now in feet nothing is more beautiful or becoming than flowers woven into tasteful garlands or chaplets. The form a circle — that emblem of eternity, so full of dread and mystery to you mortals — and the size is one that may be carried in the hand or hung up, and it always looks lovely. Believe me, nothing is prettier in my eyes, Avhich, young as they look, have had many thousands of your years of experience, than a fresh, green garland woven with bright roses." As she said this, she seized a somewhat common basket that lay near us, and passing her delicate fingers over it, as she plucked a few flowers from the surrounding plants, she held it, a picture of magical verdure and blossoms, aloft in the air over our heads, while on her arm she hung a garland as exquisitely formed and propor- tioned as if cut in marble, with, at the same time, all the airiness which only flowers can have. The effect was ravishing ! simplicity, delicacy, gracefulness, and perfume. The goddess moved around us with an air and in an attitude compared with which the glories of Titian and Raphael seem tame and cold, and as the basket was again passing over our head, we were just reaching out our hand to detain the lovely vision, when, unluckily, the parti-colored dog that guards our demesne, broke into a loud bark ; Pomona hastily seized her golden apple ; Flora dropped our basket (which fell to the ground in its wonted garb of plain willow), and both vanished into the dusky gloom of the night shadows ; at that moment, suddenly rising up in our hammock, we found we had been — dreaming. V. A CHAPTER ON ROSES. August, 1848. AFRESH bouquet of midsummer roses stands upon the table be. fore us. The morning dew-drops hang, heavy as emeralds, upon branch and buds ; soft and rich colors delight the eye with their lovely hues, and that rose-odor, which, every one feels, has not lost any thing of its divine sweetness since the first day the flower bloomed in that heaven-garden of Eve, fills the air. Yes, the flowers have it ; and if we are not fairly forced to say something this month in behalf of roses, then was Dr. Darwin mistaken in his theory of vegetable magnetism. We believe it was that monster, the Duke of Guise, who al- ways made his escape at the sight of a rose. If there are any " out- side barbarians " of this stamp among the readers of our " flowery land," let them glide out while the door is open. They deserve to be drowned in a butt of attar of rose — the insensibles ! We can well afibrd to let them go, indeed ; for we feel that we have only to mention the name of a rose, to draw more closely around us the thousands of the feirer and better part of our readers, with whom it is the type of every thing fair and lovely on earth. "Dear flower of heaven and love ! thou glorious thing That lookest out the garden nooks among ; Rose, that art ever fair and ever young ; Was it some angel on invisible wing Hover'd around thy fragrant sleep, to fling His glowing mantle of warm sunset hues A CHAPTER ON ROSES. 26 O'er thy unfolding petals, wet with dews, Such as the flower-fays to Titania bring ? flower of thousand memories and dreams, That take the heart with faintness, while we gaze On the rich depths of thy inwoven maze ; Fi'om the green banks of Eden's blessed streams 1 dream'd thee brought, of brighter days to tell Long pass'd, but promised yet with us to dwell." K there is any proof necessary that the rose has a diviner origin than all otlier flowers, it is easily found in the unvarying constancy of mankind to it for so many long centuries. Fashions there have been innumerable, in ornaments of all sorts, from simple sea-shells, worn by Nubian maidens, to costly diamonds, that heightened the charms of the proudest court beauty — silver, gold, precious stones — all hav(^ their season of favor, and then again sink into comparative neglect ; but a simple rose has ever been and will ever be the favorite emblem and adornment of beauty. " Whatsoe'er of beauty Yearns, and yet reposes, Blush, and bosom, and sweet breath, Took a shape in i-oses." Leigh Hont. Now the secret of this perpetual and undying charm about the rose, is not to be found in its color — there are bright lilies, and gay tiger-flowers, and dazzling air-plants, far more rich and vivid : it is not alone in fragrance, — for there are violets and jasmines with " more passionate sighs of sweetness ; " it is not in foliage, for there are laurels and magnolias, with leaves of richer and more glossy green. Where, then, does this secret of the world's six thousand yeai"s' homage lie ? In its being a type of infinity. Of infinity ! says our most innocent maiden reader, who loves roses without caring why, and who does not love infinity, because she does not understand it. Roses, -a type of infinity, says our theological reader, who has been in the habit of considering all flowers of the field, aye, and the gar- den, too, as emblems of the short-lived race of man — " born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." Yes, we have said it, and for the honor of the rose we will prove it, that the secret of the world's 26 HORTICULTURE. devotion to the rose, — of her being the queen of flowers by accla- mation always and for ever, is that the rose is a type of infinity. In the first place, then, the rose is a type of infinity, because there is no limit to the variety and beauty of the forms and colore which it assumes. From the mid rose, v/hose sweet, faint odor is wasted in the depths of the silent wood, or the eglantine, Avhose wreaths of fresh sweet blossoms embroider even the dusty road sides, " Starring each bush in lanes and glades," to that most perfect, full, rounded, and odorous flower, that swells the heart of the florist as he beholds its richness and symmetry, what an innumerable range of shades, and forms, and colors ! And, indeed, with the hundreds and thousands of roses of modern times, we still know little of all the varied shapes which the plant has taken in by-gone days, and which have perished with the thousand other refineinents and luxuries of the nations who cultivated and enjoyed them.* All this variety of form, so far from destroying the admiration of mankind for the rose, actually increases it. This very character of infinity, in its beauty, makes it the symbol and interpreter of the * Many of our readers may not be aware to what perfection the culture of flowers was once carried in Rome. During Caesar's reign, so abundant had forced flowers become in that city, that when the Egyptians, intending to compliment him on his birthday, sent him roses in midwinter, they found their present almost valueless from the profusion of roses in Rome. The following translation of MartiaVs Latin Ode to Caesar upon this present, will give some idea of the state of floriculture then. There can scarcely be a doubt that there were hundreds of sorts of roses known to, and cultivated by the Romans, now entirely lost. " The ambitious inhabitants of the land, watered by the Nile, have sent thee, Caesar, the roses of winter, as a present, valuable for its novelty. But the boatman of Memphis will laugh at the gardens of Pharaoh as soon as he has tahen one step in thy capital city ; for the spring in all its charms, and the flowers in their fragrance and beauty, equal the glory of the fields of Paestum. Wherever he wanders, or casts his eyes, every street is brilliant with garlands of roses. And thou, Nile ! must yield to the fogs of Rome. Send us thy harvests, and we will send thee roses." A CHAPTER ON ROSES. 27 affections of all ranks, classes, and conditions of men. The poet, amid all the perfections of the parterre, still prefers the scent of the woods and the air of freedom about the original blossom, and says — "Far dearer to me is the wild flower that grows Unseen by the brook where in shadow it flows." TliG cahhage-rose, that perfect emblem of healthful rural life, is the pride of the cottager ; the daily China rose, which cheats the window of the crowded city of its gloom, is the joy of the daughter of the humblest day laborer ; the delicate and odorous tea-rose, fated to be admired and to languish in the drawing-room or the boudoir, wins its place in the affections of those of most cultivated and fastidious tastes ; while the moss-rose unites the admiration of all classes, coming in as it does with its last added charm, to com- plete the circle of j^erfection. Again, there is the infinity of associations which float like rich incense about the rose, and that, after all, bind it most strongly to us ; for they represent the accumulated wealth of joys and sorrows, which has become so insej^arably connected with it in the human heait. " What were hfe witliout a rose I " seems to many, doubtless, to be a most extravagant aijostroj^he ; yet, if this single flower were to be struck out of existence, what a chasm in the language of the heart would be found without it ! What would the poets do ? They would find their finest emblem of female loveliness stolen away. Listen, for instance, to old Beaumont and Fletcher : " Of all flowers, Methinks a Rose is best ; It is the very emlilem of a maid; For when the west wind courts her gently, How modestly she blows and paints the sun "With her chaste blushes ! "When the north wind comes near hei- Rude and impatient, then, like chastity, She locks her beauties in her bud again, And leaves him to base briaiu" 28 HORTICULTURE. What would the lovers do ? What tender confessions, hitherto uttered by fair half-open buds and bouquets, more eloquent of pas- sion than the JVouvclle Jleloise, would have to be stammered forth in miserable clumsy words ! How many doubtful suits would be lost — how many bashful hearts would never venture — how many rash and reckless adventurers would be shipwrecked, if the tender and expressive language of the rose were all suddenly lost and blotted out ! What could we place in the hands of childhood to mirror back its innocent expression so truly? What blossoms could bloom on the breast of the youthful beauty so typical of the infinity of hope and sweet thoughts, that lie folded up in her own heart, as fair young rose-buds ? What wreath could so lovingly encircle the head of the fair young bride as that of white roses, full of purity and grace ? And, last of all, what blossom, so expressive of human affections, could we find at the bier to take the place of the rose ; the rose, sacred to this purpose for so many ages, and with so many nations, "because its breath Is rich beyond the rest ; and when it dies It doth bequeath a charm to sweeten death." Barry Cornwall. The rose is not only infinite in its forms, hues, types, and asso- ciations, but it deserves an infinite member of admirers. This is the explanation of our desire to be eloquent in its behalf. There are, unfortunately, some persons who, however lovely, beautiful, or per- fect a thing may be in itself, will never raise their eyes to look at it, or open their hearts to admire it, unless it is incessantly talked about. We have always observed, however, that the great difficulty with those who like to talk about fruits and flowers is, when once talking, to stop. There is no doubt whatever, that Ave might go on, therefore, and fill this whole number with roses, rosariums, rosaries, and rose-water, but that some of our western readers, who are look- ing for us to give them a cure for the pear-blight, might cry out — " a blight on your roses ! " We must, therefore, grow more systematic and considerate in our remarks. A CHAPTER ON ROSES. 29 We thought some years ago that we had seen that ultima thxde — " a perfect rose." But we were mistaken ! Old associates, famihar names, and long cherished sorts have their proper hold on our affections ; but — we are bound to confess it — modern florists have coaxed and teased nature till she has given them roses more perfect in form, more airy, rich and brilliant in color, and more delicate and exquisite in perfume, than any that our grandfathers knew or dreamed of. And, more than all, they have produced roses — in abundance, as large and fi-agant as June roses — that blossom all the year round. If this unceasingly renewed perpetuity of charms does not complete the claims of the rose to infinity, as far as any plant can express that quality, then are we no metaphysician. There is certainly something instinctive and true in that fa- vorite fancy of the poets — that roses are the type or symbol of female loveliness — " Know you not our only Rival flower — the human ? Loveliest weight, on lightest foot — Joy-abundant woman," sings Leigh Hunt for the roses. And, we will add, it is striking and curious that refined and careful culture has the same effect on the outward conformation of the rose that it has on feminine beauty. The Tea and the Bourhon roses may be taken as an illustration of this. They are the last and finest product of the most perfect cul- ture of the garden ; and do they not, in their graceful airy forais, their subdued and bewitching odors, and tlieir refined and delicate colors, body forth the most perfect symbol of the most refined and cultivated Imogen or Ophelia that it is possible to conceive ? We claim the entire merit of pointing this out, and leave it for some poet to make himself immortal by ! There are odd, crotchety persons among horticulturists, who correspond to old bachelors in society, that are never satisfied to love any thing in particular, because they have really no affections of their own to fix upon any object, and who are always, for instance, excusing their want of devotion to the rose, under the pretence that among so many beautiful varieties it is impossible to choose. 30 HORTICULTURE. Undoubtedly there is an embarras de richesses in the multitude of beautiful varieties that compose the groups and subdivisions of the rose family. So many lovely forms and colors are there, daz- zling the eye, and attracting the senses, that it requires a man or woman of nerve as well as taste, to decide and select. Some of the great rose-growers continually try to confuse the poor amateur by their long catalogues, and by their advertisements about " acres of roses." (Mr. Paul, an English nurseryman, published, in June last, that he had 70,000 plants in bloom at once !) This is puzzling enough, even to one that has his eyes wide open, and the sorts in full blaze of beauty before them. What, then, must be the quan- dary in which the novice, not yet introduced into the aristocracy of roses, whose knowledge only goes up to a " cabbage-rose," or a " maiden's blush," and who has in his hand a long list of some great collector — what, we say, must be his perplexity, when he suddenl}- finds amidst all the renowned names of old and new world's history, all the aristocrats and republicans, heroes and heroines of past and present times — Napoleon, Prince Esterhazy, Tippoo Saib, Semira- mis, Duchess of Sutherland, Princesse Clementine, with occasionally such touches of sentiment from the French rose-growers, as Souve- nir cfun Ami, or Nid d'' Amour (nest of love !) &c. &c. In this whirlpool of rank, fashion, and sentiment, the poor novitiate rose- hunter is likely enough to be quite wrecked ; and instead of look- ing out for a perfect rose, it is a thousand to one that he finds him- self confused amid the names of princes, princesses, and lovel}- duchesses, a vivid picture of whose charms rises to his imagination as he reads the brief words " pale flesh, wax-like, superb," or " large, perfect form, beautiful," or " pale blush, very pretty ;" so that it is ten to one that Duchesses, not Roses, are all the while at the bottom of his imagination ! Now, the only way to help the rose novices out of this difiiculty, is for all the initiated to confess their favorites. No doubt it will be a hard task for those who have had butterfly fancies, — coquetting first with one family and then with another. But we trust these horti- cultural flirts are rare among the more experienced of our garden- ing readers, — persons of sense, who have laid aside such follies, as only becoming to youthful and inexperienced amateurs. A CHAPTER ON ROSES. 31 We have long ago invited our correspondents to send us their " confessions," which, if not as mysterious and fascinating as those of Rousseau, would be found far more innocent and wholesome to our readers. Mr. Buist (whose new nursery grounds, near Phila- delphia, have, we learn, been a paradise of roses this season), ha^ already sent us his list of favorites, which we have before made pub- lic, to the gi'eat satisfaction of many about to form little rose-gar- dens. Dr. Valk, also, has indicated his preferences. And to en- courage other devotees — more experienced than ourselves — we give our own list of favorites, as follows : First of all roses, then, in our estimation, stands the Bourbons (the only branch of the family, not repudiated by republicans). The most perpetual of all perpetuals, the most lovely in form, of all colors, and many of them of the richest fragrance ; and, for us northerners, most of all, hardy and easi ly cultivated^ we cannot but give them the first rank. Let us, then, say — HALF A DOZEN BOURBON ROSES. Souvenir de Malmaison, pale flesh colcyr. Paul Joseph, puriMsh crimson. Hermosa, deep rose. Queen, delicate fawn color. Dupetit Thouars, changeable carmine. Acidalie, white. Souvenir de Malmaison is, take it altogether, — its constant blooming habit, its large size, hardiness, beautiful form, exquisite color, and charming fragrance, — our favorite rose ; the rose which, if we should be condemned to that hard penance of cultivating but oi>e variety, our choice would immediately settle upon. Its beauty suggests a blending of the finest sculpture and the loveliest femi- nine complexion. Second to the Bourbons, we rank the Remontantes, as the French term them ; a better name than the English one — perpe- tuals ; for they are by no means perpetual in their blooming habit, when compared with the Bourbons, China, or Tea roses. They are, in fact, June roses, that bloom two or three times in the season, 32 HORTICULTURE. whenever strong new shoots spring up ; hence, no name so appro- priate as Remontante^ — sending up new flowei- shoots. We think this class of roses has been a Httle overrated by rose-growers. Its great merit is the true, old-fashioned rose character of the blossoms, — large and fragrant as a damask or Provence rose. But in this climate, Remontmites cannot be depended on for a constant supply of floAvers, like Bourbon roses. Here are our favorite : HALF A DOZEN REMONTANTES. La Reine, deep rose, very large. Duchess of Sutherland, pale rose. Crimson Perpetual, light crimson. Aubernon, brilliant crimson. Lady Alice Peel, fine deep pink. Madame Dameme, darh crimson. Next to these come the China Roses, less fragrant, but everlast- ingly in bloom, and with very bright and rich colors. HALF A DOZEN CHINA ROSES. Mrs. Bosanquet, exquisite pale fiesh color, Madame Breon, rose. Eugene Beauharnais, bright crimson. Clara Sylvain, pure white. Cramoisie Supericure, brilliant crimson. Virginale, blush. The Tea Roses, most refined of all roses, unluckily, require considerable shelter and care in winter, in this climate ; but they so richly repay all, that no rose-lover can grudge them this trouble. Tea roses are, indeed, to the common garden varieties what the finest porcelain is to vulgar crockery ware. HALF A DOZEN TEA ROSES. Safrano, the buds rich deep fawn. Souvenir d'un Ami, salmon, shaded with rose. Goubault, hight rose, large and fragrant. A CHAPTER ON ROSES. 33 Devoniensis, creamy white, Bougere, (/lossy bronze. Josephine Malton, beautiful shaded white. We thought to give Noisettes the go-by ; but the saucy, ram- pant httle beauties climb up and thiaist their clusters of bright blos- soms into our face, and will be heard. So here they are : HALF A DOZEN NOISETTES. Solfaterre, bright sulphur, large. Jaune Desprez, large bright fawn. Cloth of Gold, pure yellow, fine. Aimee Vibert, pwre white, very free bloomer. Fellenberg, brilliant crimson. Joan of Arc, pure %uhite. " Girdle of Venus ! does he call this a select list ?" exclaims some leveller, who expected us to compress all rose perfections into half a dozen sorts ; when here we find, on looking back, that we have thirty, and even then, there is not a single moss rose, climbing- rose, Provence rose, damask rose, to say nothing of " musk roses," " microphylla roses," and half a dozen other divisions that we boldly shut oui- eyes upon ! Well, if the truth must come out, we confess it boldly, that we are worshippers of the EVERBLOOMiNa roses. Compared with them, beautiful as all other roses may be and are (we can't deny it), they have little chance of favor with those that we have named, which are a perpetual garland of sweetness. It is the diiference between a smile once a year, and a golden temper, al- ways sweetness and sunshine. W'hy, the everblooming roses make a garden of themselves ! Not a day without rich colors, delicious perfume, luxuriant foliage. No, take the lists as they are — too small by half ; for we cannot cut a name out of them. And yet, there are a few other roses that ought to be in the smallest collection. That finest of all rose-gems, the Old Red Moss, still at the head of all moss roses, and its curious cousin, the Crested Moss, must have their place. Those fine hardy chmbers, that m northern gardens will grow in any exposure, and cover the highest 3 34 HORTICULTURE. walls or trellises with gai'lantls of beauty, — the Queen of the Prai- ries and Baltimore Belle (or, for southern gardens, say — Laure Da- ooust, and Greville, and Raga Arjrshire) ; that finest and richest (jf all yellow roses, the double Persian Yellow, and half a dozen of the gems among the hybrid roses, such as ChinMole, George the Fourth, Village Maid, Great Western, Fulgeus, Blanchefleur ; we should try, at least, to make room for these also. If we were to have but three roses, for our own personal gratifi- cation, they would be — Souvenir de Malmaison, Old Bed Moss, Gen. Duhourg. The latter is a Bourbon rose, which, because it is an old variety, and not very double, lias gone out of fashion. We, however, shall • •ultivate it as long as we enjoy the blessing of olfactory nerves ; for it gives us, all the season, an abundance of flowers, with the most perfect rose scent that we have ever yet found ; in fact, the true attar of Bose. There ai'e few secrets in the cultivation of the rose in this <-iimate. First of all, make the soil deej) ; and, if the subsoil is not <|uite dry, let it be Avell drained. Then remember, that what the rose delights to grow in is loa^n and rotten manure. Enrich your soil, therefore, witli well-decomposed stable manure ; and if it is too sandy, mix fresh loam from an old i^asture field ; if it is too clayey, mix river or pit sand with it. The most perfect specific stimulus that we have ever tried in the culture of the rose, is what Mr. Rivers calls roasted turf, which is easily made by paring sods from the lane sides, and half charring them. It acts like magic upon the little spongioli:^s of the rose ; making new buds and fine fi-esh foliage start out very speedily, and then a succession of superb and richly colored flowers. We commend it, especiall}-, to all those who cultivate roses in old gardens, where the soil is more or less worn out. And now, like the Persians, with the hope that our fair read- ers " may sleep upon roses, and the dew that fells may turn into rose-water," we must end this i-ather prolix chapter upon roses. VI. A CHAPTER ON GREEN-HOUSES. December, 1848. DECEMBER, here iu the north, is certainly a cold month. Yes, one does not look for primroses under the hedges, nor gather violets in the valleys, often, at this season. One must be content to enjoy a bright sky over head, and a frosty walk under foot ; one must find pleasure in the anatomy of trees, and the grand outline of hills and mountains half covered with snow. And then, to be sure, there are the evergreens. What a pleasant thing it is to see how bravely they stand their ground, and bid defiance even to zero ; especially those two fine old veterans, the Hemlock and the White Pine. They, indeed, smile defiance at all the attacks of the Ice King. It is not easy to make a winter landscape dull or gloomy where they stand, ready as they are at all times with such a sturdy look of wholesome content in every bough. That must be an insipid climate, depend upon it, where there is *' summer all the year round." In an ideal point of view, — that is, for angels and " beatitudes " — it is, nay, it must be, quite perfect. Their sensations never wear out. But to us, poor mortals, com- pounded as we are of such a moiety of clay, and alas, too many of us full of inconstancy, — always demanding variety — always looking for a change — wearying, as the angels do not, of things which ought to satisfy any reasonable creature for ever ; no, even perpetual sum- mer will not do for us. Winter, keen and frosty winter, comes to brace up our languid nerves. It acts like a long night's sleep, after 36 HORTICULTURE. a day foil of exciting events. Spring comes back again to us like a positively new miracle ! To vpatcli all these black and leafless trees suddenly become draped with green again, to see the ice-bound and snow-clad earth, now so dead and cold, absolutely bud and grow warm with new life, — that, certainly, is a joy which never animates the soul of our fellow-beings of the equator. " But the winter, the long winter — without verdure — without foliage — without flowers — all so bleak and barren." Softly, warm weather friend, open this little glazed door, out of the parlor, even now, while the icicles hang from the eaves, and what do you see ? Truly a cheering and enlivening prospect, we think ; a little minia- ture tropical scene, separated from the outer frost-world only by a few panes of glass, and yet as gay and blooming as the valley of Cashmere in June. What can be purer than these pure, spotless double white, — what richer than these rich, parti-colored Camel- lias ? What more delicate than these Heaths, with their little fairy - like bells ? AVhat more fresh and airy than these Azaleas ? What more delicious than these Daphnes, and Neapolitan Violets ? Why, one can spend an hour here, every day, in studying these curious and beautiful strangers — belles of other climes, that turn winter into summer, to repay us for a little warmth and shelter. Is there not something exciting and gTatifying in this little spectacle of our tri- umph of art over nature ? this holding out a little garden of the most delicate plants in the very face of winter, stern as he is, and bidding him defiance to his teeth ? Truly yes ; and therefore, to one who has enough of vegetable sympathy in his nature to love flowei-s with all his or her heart — to love them enouo-h to watch over them, to care for all their wants, and to feel an absolute thrill of joy a.s the first delicate bit of color mounts into the cheek of every blushing bud as it is about to burst open, — to such of our readers, we say, a GREEN-HOUSE is a great comfort and consolation ! There are many of our readers who enjoy the luxury of green- houses, hot-houses, and conservatories, — large, beautifully construct- ed, heated with hot water pipes, paved with marble, and filled with every rare and beautiful exotic worth ha\ing, from the birdlike aii plants of Guiana to the jewel-like Fuchsias of Mexico. They have taste, and much " money in their purses." They want no advice v^^a^^sm z^fei — K > y'^^'^i-^^^,^^. 'm^vMtymv^.y^.v/WM'//^MmMM//m ^^/i>X : A CHAPTER ON GREEN-HOUSES. 37 fiom us ; they have only to say " let us have green-houses," and they have them. But we have also other readers, many thousands of them, who have quite as much natural taste, and not an hundi-edth part as much of the " needful " with which to gratify it. Yes, many, who look upon a green-house as a sort of crystal palace, which it requires a great deal of skill to construct, and untold wealth to pay for and keep in order. The little conversation that we hold to-day must be considered as addressed to this latter class ; and we don't propose to show even them, how to build a green-house for nothing, — but how it may be built cheaply, and so simply that it is not necessary to send for the architect of Trinity Church to give them a plan for its construction. The idea that comes straightway into one's head, when a gi-een- house is mentioned, is something with a half roof stuck against a wall, and glazed all over, — what gardeners call a lean-to or shed- roofed green-house. This is a very good form where economy alone is to be thought of ; but not in the least Avill it please the eye of taste. We dislike it, because there is something incomplete about it ; it is, in fact, only half a green-house. We must have, then, the idea, in a complete form, by having the whole roof — what in garden architecture is called a " span-roof" — which, indeed, is nothing more than the common form of the roof of a house, sloping both ways from the ridge pole to the eaves. A green-house may be of any size, from ten to as many hundred feet ; but let us now, for the sake of having something definite be- fore us, choose to plan one 15 by 20 feet. We will suppose it at- tached to a cottage in the country, extending out 20 feet, either on the south, or the east, or the west side ; for, though the south is the best aspect, it will do in this bright and sunny climate very well in either of the others, provided it is fully exposed to the sun, and not concealed by trees at the sunny time of day. Taking fig. 2 as the ground-plan, you will see that by cutting down the window in the parlor, so as to make a glazed door of it, you have the opening precisely where you want it for convenience, and exactly where there will be a fine vista down the walk as you sit in the parlor. Now, by having this house a little wider than 38 HORTICULTURE. usuul, with an open roof, our plants have the light on all sides ; con- sequently they are never drmon. Besides this, instead of a single walk down the front of the house, at the end of which you are forced to wheel about, like a grenadier, and return ; you have the agreea- ble variety of making the entire circuit of the house, reaching the same spot again, with something new before you at every step. This walk is 2^ feet wide. The stage for the tall plants is a paral- lelogram, in the middle of the house, c, 7 feet wide ; the shelf, which borders the margin of the house, rf, is about 18 inches wide. This will hold all the small pots, the more delicate growing plants, the winter-flowering bulbs, and all those little favorites which of them- selves like best to be near the light, and which one likes to have near the eye. It is quite incredible what a number of dozen of small plants this single shelf, running nearly all round, will hold. w i i WALK. Fig. 2. - Plan of a small Green-IIouse. Now let us take a glance at the plan of the .sv clion of the green- house, fig. 3, which may be supposed to be a slice down through the end of it. The sides of the house are 8 feet high. They con- sist of a row of sashes (/), 3^ feet high, placed just below the plate that supports the roof, and a wall, A, on which these sashes stand. This may be a wall of brick or stone (if of the former, 8 inches A CHAPTER ON GKEEN-HOUSES. 39 Fio. 3. Section of the Same. thick is suflficient) ; or it may, when it is to be attached to a wood- en dwelling, be built of wood — good cedar l)0sts being set as sup- ports 3 1 feet deep, and lined with weather- boarding on each — side, leaving a space of 12 inches wide, to be filled very com- pactly with charcoal dust, or dry tan. At the farther end of the house is a dooi', i. The roof may rise in the middle so as to be from 12 to 15 feet high (in our plan, it is shown 12 feet). It is wholly glazed, — the sashes on either side sliding down in the rafters, so as to admit air when necessary. The rafters themselves to be placed about 4 feet apart. Is it not a neat little green-house — this structure that we have conjured up before you ? It is particularly light and airy ; and do you not observe that the great charm about it is, that every plant is within reach — always inviting attention, always ready to be en- joyed ? Truly, it is not like those tall houses, with stages running up like stairs, entirely out of the reach of one's nose, arms or fingers. Do you not see, also, that you can very well water and take care of every plant yourself, if you are really fond of such things ? Very well ; now let us look a little into the way in which we are to keep this little place of pleasure always warm and genial for the plants themselves. In the first place, we must inform our reader that we are not to have either a furnace with brick flues, or a boiler with hot water pipes. They are both excellent things ; but we must have, at pre- sent, something simpler and more economical. Every body, in the northern States, very well knows what an air- tiyht stove is; a most complete and capital little machine, whether for wood or coal ; most easily managed, and giving us almost the whole possible amount of caloric to be got out of hickory or anthracite. 40 HORTICULTURE. Now we mean to lieat our little greeu-house with an air-tight stove, of good size ; and we mean to heat it, too, in the latest and most apjjroved system — nothing less than what the English call Pohnaise — by which we are able to warm every part of the house alike ; by which we shall be able to create a continual circulation of the warm air from one end of it, quite over the plants, to the other ; and which, no doubt, they will mistake for a West India current of air every evening. In order to bring this about, we must have an air-chamber. This also must be below the level of the green-house floor. It is not im- portant under what part it is placed ; it may be built wherever it is most convenient. In our plan [fig. 2), as there is a cellar under the parlor, we will put it next the cellar wall, so that there may be a door to enter it fi-om this cellar. This air-chamber must be built (jf brick, say about 7 or 8 feet square (as represented by the dotted lines around b). The wall of this air-chamber should be two bricks thick at the sides and one brick at the ends, and all smoothly plas- tered on the inside. The top should be covered with large flagging stones ; and upon the top of these, a course of bricks should be laid, which "will form part of the floor of the walk in the green-house above. Or, if flagging is not to be had, then cover the whole with a low arch of brick work. In this air-chamber we will place our air-tight stove, the smoke pipe of which must be brought back into the cellar again, so as to be carried into one of the chimney flues of the house. There must be a large sheet-iron or cast-iron door to the air-chamber, to enable us to feed the fire in the stove ; and, in the top or covering of the aii-- i-hamber, directly in the middle of the walk (at l), must be an opening 18 inches in diameter, covered with a grating, or register. Through this the hot air will rise into the house. Now, both that we may heat -the house easily and quickly, and also that we may have that continual circulation of air which is so wholesome for the plants, we must also have what is called a " cold- uir drain ;" it must lead from that end of the house farthest from the hot-air chamber, and therefore the coldest end, directly to the bot- tom of the air-chamber itself We will put the mouth of this drain in the middle of tht^ \\alk iieai- the door, at 2, with a grating over it A CHAPTER ON GREEN-HOUSES. 41 also. This drain shall be simply a long box, made of boards ; and we ■will have it 1 foot by 2 feet, inside. From the mouth, 2, it shall lead along, in a straight line, just below the level of the floor, to B, where it descends so as to enter on a level with the floor of the hot- air chamber. We will also have a smaller box, or drain, for fresh air, leading from the bottom of the air-chamber to the open aii' through the foundation wall, at 4, to supply the house with fresli air. This air-pipe should be six inches in diameter, and there should be a slide in it to enable us to shut it up, whenever the weather is too cold to admit of its being open, without lowering the temperature of the house too much. Now let us suppose all is ready, and that a fire is lighted in our air-tight stove. The air in the air-chamber becoming heated, it rises rapidly and passes into the green-house through the grated opening at 1. .Very quickly, then, in order to supply the deficiency caused in the air-chamber, the air rushes through the cold-air drain. This makes a current from the coolest part of the house, at 2 , towards the air-chamber ; and, to make good again the lost air carried oft" from that end of the house, the warm stream which rises through the opening at 1, immediately flows over the tops of the plants to- wards the opposite end of the house, and, as it becomes cold again, descends and enters the mouth of the cold-air drain, at 2, By taking advantage of this simple and beautiful principle, that is to say the rising of warm air, we are able in this way to heat every part of the house alike, and have a constant bland zephyr passing over the plants.* It is not easy to find any thing simpler or more easily managed than this way of heating a small green-house. In this latitude, a couple of cords of wood oi- a couple of tons of anthracite, will be sufficient for the whole winter ; for, it must be remembered, that no matter how cold the day, the moment the sun shines there is not the slightest need of a fire ; the temperature will then immediately begin to rise. Usually after bright days, which are abundant in our coldest winter months, we shall not need to light a fire till one, * When a coal air-tiglit stove is used, there should be a water pan sus- pended over it. For a wood air-tight it is not necessary. 42 HORTICULTURK. two, or sometimes three hours after sunset ; and if our air-tight is> one of good size, and constructed as it should be, so as to maintain a good fire for a long time, our last replenishing in the evening need not usually be later than ten o'clock ; but we must, in this case, give H full supply of fuel for the night's consumption. Every sensible person will, of course, use light outside shutters, for the roof and side glass of such a house as this. We slide them on at sunset, and take them ofi^ at sunrise ; and by this means we not only save one-third of our fuel, but keep up a pleasant green- house temperature, without cold draughts at night. It is worth while to remember, too, that in glazing the roof, the most useful possible size for the glass is 4 by 6 inches, or, at the largest, 6 by 8 inches. The former answers the purpose perfectly, and is not only much less costly than large glass, but is also far less expensive to keep in repair ; neither hail nor frost breaking the small panes, as they do the large ones. As to the minor details, we will have a small cistern under the floor, into which the water from the roof can be conveyed for water- ing the plants. Beneath the centre stage (which may be partly concealed with lattice work), we may keep our dahlia roots, and a dozen other sorts of half hardy plants for the summer border, now dormant, and snugly packed quite out of sight. We did intend, when we sat down, to give our novices a great deal of exceedingly valuable advice about the sorts of plants that they ought to cultivate in this glazed flower-garden. But we see that we are getting beyond the limits of a leader, and must not, therefore, weary those of our subscribers, who take no more interest in geraniums than we do in Irish landlords, with too long a j^arley on exotics. We must have space enough, however, for a word or two more to beginners. Let them take our word for it — if they prefer an abundance of beautiful flowers to a pot-2iourri^ of every imaginable species that can be grown under glass, they had better confine them- selves to a few really worthy and respectable genera. If they onlj- want winter-blooming plants, then let them take Camellias and Chi- nese Azaleas, as the groundwork of their collection, filling in the interstices with daphnes, heaths, sweet-soented violets, and choice A CHAPTER ON GKEEN-HOUSES. 43 bulbs. For the spring, i-ely on everblooming roses,* ana geraniums. If they also wish to have the green-house gay in summer, they must shade it (or wash the under side of the roof-glass with whiting), and grow Fuchsias and Achimenes. In this way, they will never be without flowers in abundance, while their neighbors, who collect every new thing to be heard of under the sun, will have more tall stalks and meagre foliage, than bright blossoms and odorous bouquets for their trouble. * Nothing is more satisfactory than those fine Noisette roses, the La- 7narque and Cloth of Gold, planted in an inside border, and trained up under the rafters of the green-house. In this way they grow to great size, and give a profusion of coses. VII. ON FEMININE TASTE IN RURAL AFFAIRS. April, 1849. IT7"HAT a very little tact sometimes betrays the national charac- » V ter ; and what an odd thing this national character is ! Look at a Frenchman. He eats, talks, lives in public. He is only happy when he has spectators. In town, on the boulevards, in the cafe, at places of public amusement, he is all enjoyment. But in the country — ah, there he never goes willingly ; or else, he only goes to sentimentalize, or to entertain his town friends. Even the natural born country people seem to find nature and solitude ennuyant, and so collect in little villages to keep each other in spirits ! The Frenchman eats and sleeps almost any where ; but he is never " at home but when he is abroad." Look, on the other hand, at John Bull. He only lives what he feels to be a rational life, when he lives in the country. His country place is to him a little Juan Fernandez island ; it contains his own family, his own castle, every thing that belongs to him. He hates the smoke of town ; he takes root in the soil. His horses, his dogs, his trees, are not separate existences ; they are parts of himself. He is social with a reservation. Nature is nearer akin to him than strange men. His dogs are truly attached to him ; he doubts if his fellows are. People often play the hypocrite ; but the trees in his park never deceive him. Home is to him the next best place to heaven. And only a little narrow strait of water divides these two nations ! ON FEMININE TASTE IN RURAL AFFAIRS. 45 Shall we ever have a distinct national character ? Will a country, which is settled by every people of the old world, — a dozen nations, all as distinct as the French and the English, — ever crys- tallize into a symmetrical form — something distinct and homoge- neous ? And what will that national character be ? Certainly no one, who looks at our comparative isolation — at the broad ocean that separates us from such external influences — at the mighty internal forces of new government and new circum- stances, which continually act upon us, — and, above all, at the mighty vital force of the Yankee Constitution, which every year swallows hundreds of thousands of foreigners, and digests them all ; no one can look reflectingly on all this, and not see that there is a national type, which will prevail over all the complexity, which various origin, foreign manners, and different religions bring to our shores. The English are, perhaps, the most distinct of civilized nations, in their nationality. But they had almost as mixed an origin as ourselves, — Anglo-Saxon, Celts, Roman, Danish, Norman ; all these apparently discordant elements, were fused so successfully into a great and united people. That a hundred years hence will find us quite as distinct and quite as developed, in our national character, we cannot doubt. What that character will be, in all its phases, no one at present can precisely say ; but that the French and English elements will largely influence it in its growth, and yet, that in morals, in feeling, and in heart, we shall be entirely distinct from either of those nations, is as clear to us as a summer noon. We are not going into a profound philosophical dissertation on the political or the social side of national character. We want to touch very slightly on a curious little jDoint that interests us ; one that political philosophers would think quite beneath them ; one that moralists would not trouble themselves about ; and one that we are very much afraid nobody else will think worth notice at all ; ;jnd therefore we shall set about it directly. What is the reason American ladies donH love to work in their gardens ? It is of no use whatever, that some fifty or a hundred of our fair 46 HORTICULTURE. readers say, " we do." We have carefully studied the matter, until it has become a fact past all contradiction. They may love to " potter " a little. Three or four times in the spring they take a fancy to examine the color of the soil a few inches below the sur- face ; they sow some China Asters, and plant a few Dahlias, and it is all over. Love flowers, with all their hearts, they certainly di>. Few things are more enchanting to them than a fine garden ; and bouquets on their centre tables are positive necessities, with every lady, from Maine to the Rio Grande. Now, we certainly have all the love of nature of our English forefathers. We love the country; and a large part of the mil- lions, earned every year by our enterprise, is spent in creating and embellishing country homes. But, on the contrary, our wives and daughters only love gardens as the French love them — for the results. They love to walk through them ; they enjoy the beauty and perfume of their products, but only as amateurs. They know no more of that intense enjoyment of her who plans, creates, and daily watches the growth of those gardens or flowers, — no more of that absolute, living enjoyment, which the English have in out-of- door pursuits, than a mere amateur, who goes through a fine gal- lery of pictures, knows of the intensified emotions which the painters of those pictures experienced in their souls, Avhen they gazed on the gradual growth and perfected splendor of their finest master-pieces. As it is plain, from our love of the country, that we are not French at heart, this manifestation that we complain of, must come from our natural tendency to copy the social manners of the most polished nation in the world. And it is indeed quite wondeiful how, being scarcely in the least affected by the morale, we still bor- row almost instinctively, and entirely without being aware of it, so much from la Belle France. That our dress, mode of life, and in- tercourse, is largely tinged wdth French taste, every traveller notices. But it goes farther. Even the plans of our houses become more and more decidedly French. We have had occasion, lately, to make considerable explorations in the domestic architecture of France and England, and we have noticed some striking national peculiarities. One of these relates to the connection of the principal apartments. In a French house, the beau ideal is to have every thing ensuite ; ON FEMININE TASTE IN RURAL AFFAIRS. 47 all the rooms open into each other ; or, at least, as many of the largest as will produce a fine effect. In an English house, every I'oom is complete in itself. It may be very large, and very grand, but it is all the worse for being connected with any other room ; for that destroys the ^^I'ivacy which an Englishman so much loves. Does any one, familiar with the progress of building in the United States for the last ten years, desire to be told which mode we have followed? And yet, there are very few who are aware that our love of folding-doors, and suites of apartments, is essen- tially French. Now our national taste in gardening and out-door employments, is just in the process of formation. Honestly and ardently be- lieving that the loveliest and best women in the world are those of our own country, we cannot think of their losing so much of tlieir own and nature's bloom, as only to enjoy their gardens by the results, like the French, rather than through the development, like the English. We would gladly show them how much they lose. We would convince them, that only to pluck the full-blown flower, is like a first introduction to it, compared with the life-long friend- ship of its mistress, who has nursed it from its first two leaves ; and that the real zest of our enjoyment of nature, even in a garden, lies in our looking at her, not like a spectator who admires, but like a dear and intimate friend, to whom, after long intimacy, she reveals .sweets wholly hidden from those who only come to her in full drees, and in the attitude of formal visitors. If any one wishes to know how completely and intensely Eng- lish women enter into the spirit of gardening, he has only to watch the wife of the most humble artisan who settles in any of our cities. She not only has a pot of flowers — her back-yard is a perfect curi- osity-shop of botanical rarities. She is never done with training, and watering, and caring for them. And truly, they reward her well ; for who ever saw such large geraniums, such fresh daisies, such I'uddy roses ! Comparing them with the neglected and weak specimens in the garden of her neighbor, one might be tempted t