UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT. MESSRS. C. SCRIBNER & Co. beg to announce that they have in preparation a limited edition of "MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD," TO BE IUVSTBATED WITH TEN PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS UPON THE FARM, BY MR. ROCKWOOD, OF THIS CITY, The edition will be limited in number, and will make a unique and elegant volume in quarto form. Early orders are solicited. B T THE SAMS A UTffOR. HY FARM OF FDGEn'OOD 1 vol. $1 75 WET DAYS AT F.DCEWOOD 1 TO]. I 75 nf-VERIES OF A BACHELOR , 1vol. 175 DREAM LIFE. 1vol. 1 75 SEI'F.\ STORIES, WITH ASXE.\T A.\D AT71C 1vol. 1 75 1>R. JOfl\S 5 volt. 3 50 Ci'firi >rnt kv mail, fctl paid, on rtttifj of prict. RURAL STUDIES WITH HINTS FOR COUNTRY PLACES. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD," NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO. 1867. Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by CHAELES SCHIBXER & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. JOHN F. TROW & Co., PRINTERS, STEREOTYPER8, AND KLECTROTTPER3, 50 Greene Street, New York. PREFACE. fr\ j 9 to qualify the monotony of one unvarying scene, be- wildering from its very extent not only to distinguish the home view from that of every plodder along the highway, but furthermore, and chiefly, to show such traces of art management as shall quicken the zest with which the natural beauties, as successively un- folded, are enjoyed. A great scene of mountains, or river, or sea, or plain, is indeed always a great scene ; but in the presence of it a country home is not neces- sarily a beautiful home. To this end, the art that deals with landscape effect must wed the home to the view ; must drape the bride, and teach us the piquant value of a " coy, reluctant, amorous delay." Again, it should be a cardinal rule in landscape art (as in all other art, I think) not to multiply means for producing a given effect. Where one stroke of the brush is enough, two evidence weakness, and three incompetency. If you can secure a graceful sweep to your approach-road by one curve, two are an impertinence. If a clump of half a dozen trees will effect the needed diversion of the eye and pro- duce the desired shade, any additions are worse than needless. If some old lichened rock upon your lawn is grateful to the view, do not weaken the effect by multiplying rocks. Simple effects are the purest and best effects as well in landscape art as in moral teaching. 180 RURAL STUDIES. A single outlying boulder will often illustrate by contrast the smoothness of a lawn better than the marks of a ponderous roller. One or two clumps of alders along the side of a brooklet will designate its course more effectively and pleasantly than if you were to plant either bank w r ith wallows. A single spiral tree in a coppice will be enough to bring out all the beauty of a hundred round-topped ones. Be- cause some simple rustic gate has a charming effect at one point of your grounds, do not for that reason repeat it in another. Because the Virginia creeper makes a beautiful autumn show, clambering into the tops of one of your tall cedars with its five-lobed crimson leaflets, do not therefore plant it at the foot of all your cedars. Because at some special point the red rooflet of a gateway lights up charmingly the green of your lawn, and fastens the eye of visitors, do not for that reason make all your gateways with red roorlets. If some far-away spire of a country church comes through some forest vista to your eye, do not perplex yourself by cutting forest pathways to other spires. Again, (and I think I have trenched upon this topic previously in the course of these pages,) every pos- sessor and improver of a country estate, however small or however large, should work upon clearly defined plans, decided upon from the beginning. I LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 181 do not mean to say that diagrams and surveyor's maps may be positively necessary, provided the director of the improvements has a clear understand- ing of the boundaries and surface, and a clear under- standing of the effects he wishes to accomplish. I only insist that promiscuous planting, and the laying down of paths, little by little, or year by year, with- out reference, clear and constant, to the final results, and to a plan that shall embrace the whole property, will involve great Avaste of labor, and the inevitable undoing in the future of what may be done to-day. Of course, where such work is intrusted to a corps of gardeners and laborers, complete diagrams will be necessary ; and it is only where the constant personal supervision of the director, whether proprietor or other, can be counted on, that such detailed exhibit of the work in hand can be dispensed with. No general plan, such as I refer to, can be safely matured without, first, full and intimate knowledge of the ground and its environs, and, second, a clear under- standing of the intentions and tastes of the proprietor under whose occupancy the plan is to reach fulfil- ment. I do not at all mean to say that the laws of taste in respect to landscape art are to meet revision at the will of any chance proprietor, or that the art itself has not its elemental principles which no occu- 182 RURAL STUDIES. t pant of a country estate can safely disturb. But one landholder has a penchant for agriculture, and wishes to make all the available acres contribute to his taste for cattle or crops ; another has a horticultural mania, and wishes the outlay to take such a shape as shall most contribute to his special pursuit ; still another foresees a demand for his acres as villa sites, and desires such arrangement as shall best contribute to their conversion into some half-dozen or more of attractive homesteads ; and yet another wishes such improvement as shall best develop the natural features of the place, and insure the most economic treatment of the same, without any view to future sale, or to whims, whether horticultural or agricultural. Now it is strictly within the province of land- scape art to meet either or all of these views without violation of its elemental principles. I have already intimated how far the offices of husbandman and his methods of culture may be subordinated to good landscape effect : of horticulture this is even more true. In laying out with a vieAv to ultimate division of country property for villa sites, there are certain difficulties in the way. In a general sense, it is true that the more you make beautiful a country property, the more you make it inviting for country residences. But landscape design with a view to a single owner- ship and a single home establishment must needs be LA YING UT OF GR UNDS. 183 different from one which looks to the dispersion of the property into a dozen lesser homes. Absolute unity of plan will, in such a case, be naturally out of the ques- tion. There must be some measure of sacrifice to the contingencies reckoned upon ; no sacrifice of charm, indeed, when the purpose is understood : six adjoin- ing sites, well ordered, and planted with a view to future occupancy, may embrace a thousand beauties, but Avill not, of course, preserve that unity of effect which would belong to a single permanent property. On the score of taste, a competent landscape-gar- dener has no need to compare notes with the pro- prietor of country property ; but he should be put in full possession of all the economies of his plan. Does he wish a reservation for agricultural purposes, for vineyard, for orcharding, more than will be essential to his household supply ? Does he count upon subse- quent division of the property for building purposes ? These questions should meet full discussion and the outlay be adjusted thereby. But it is unfortu- nately true that half the owners of country estates entertain no considerations of this kind, and, entering upon their improvements with a vague improvidence, find after a lapse of years, the bulk of them useless and inconvertible. City improvements may be under- taken Avithout long look into the future ; errors may be amended as fast as brick and mortar can be piled 184 RURAL STUDIES. together ; but great trees do not grow in a night, or in a year. In America, we must count upon divisions and subdivisions of property. Great ancestral estates will nowhere be long ancestral. Our republican mill grinds them sharply. Hence we lack, and must always lack that artistic dealing with country estates which can count upon oneness of proprietorship for an indefinite period of years. Better to admit this in the beginning, and let our landscape art take its form accordingly, than to weary itself with imitation of what is feudally and mercilessly old. Nothing can cheat us, indeed, of the beauty of God's trees and flowers and wood-paths. Nature is as much to the occupant of a fifty-acre holding, as to the Duke of Devonshire, or the Marquis of Buccleugh. But half a thousand acres of sylvan glade and of velvety turf cannot be maintained with us from generation to generation as the feeding ground for fallow deer ; it may, however, have such keeping and embellishment as shall fit it for a score of fair homes. Better the homes with cheerfulness in them than the deer-park with want shivering beyond the walls. City and Town Parks. office of a park is wholly different from that -*- of a village Gjrecn ; the same demands do not LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 185 suggest the two. The city square or plaza is the city representative of the village common : this latter being only a rural plaza whereon the green-sward is a more economic and appropriate pavement than stones ; the incessant traffic and wear of a metropolis do not blot the grass. The park represents riot only a demand for space and trees, but a revival and reassertion of country instincts which city associations are only too apt to infold and entomb ; but, however drearily infolded, there comes some day to all denizens of cities a resur- rection of those earlier rural instincts which crave growth and food an outburst, through all the stony interstices of pavement, of the love of trees and green things. Not until a city has become so large as to deny to very many living in its interior intimate association and familiarity with the encompassing belt of country will this new need declare itself strongly. Nay, in a city, whose elevated situation, gives outlook from its open spaces upon great fields of greenness around it, such need of park land will not for a long period of years be felt. Eventually, not only will the instinctive rural longings of the masses stimulate to this struggle to recover the lost birthright of trees and turf, but the very vanities of city gro wth will demand a larger airing than populous streets can supply ; and the man 180 RURAL STUDIES. who loves a sleek team, and indulges in its display, will vie with the workman (who wants romping place for his children) in clamor for a public park. If our vanities and our healthful tastes were always as closely yoked, we should have a better growth from the yoking. However, it may come about whether from the natural impulses of a crowded population to ally themselves once again with the bounteous amplitude of the fields, or Avhether from the artificial desire to give room and exhibition to equipages it is undeniable that all towns of ambi- tious pretensions and of assured and rapid growth do, after a certain period of street packing, bestir them- selves in a feverish way to secure some easy lounging- place under the trees. Unfortunately the stir is, for the most part, at so late a day, that all available or desirable localities have been secured for other pur- poses. But, whatever the alternative of cost, I can- not learn that such an enterprise, when thoroughly matured and in complete operation, has ever proved a disappointment. I have never heard of a disposition on the part of voters to rescind any appropriation for such a purpose, and to convert a public garden or park to economic uses. I never heard of an instance where pride did not speedily attach to the public grounds, if accessible and well cared for, and where the people of such a town did not make a boast and a glory of the endowment. LA YING UT OF Gh UND8. \ 8 V Even in countries where such far-sighted improve- ments are effected by the force majeure of an Imperial edict, popular resentments or revolutions never find their leverage in such tokens of extravagance. There are not a thousand men in Paris, rich or poor, who would make quarrel with Louis Napoleon for the millions lavished upon the Bois de Boulogne, or the appointments of the Park Monceau. But there were tens of thousands of malcontents, in Louis Philippe's time, with the fortification bill, and the inclosure for private uses, of a terrace of the garden of the Tuil- leries. The people may not, indeed, have a very clear sense of their wants in the matter of a public park, but once supply them attractively and accessibly, and they feel the appositeness of the supply, and cling to it with as much obstinacy as pride. We Americans have a way of shrinking from pro- spective taxation, whatever the purpose of it may be ; but when once fairly saddled with it, whether for the benefit of corporations or monopolies or public im- provements, we bear it with a most admirable un- flinchingness. The costs of public gardens or parks, if well ordered, and not made the vehicle of private peculation, are not such as would create a remon- strance from the people of any American city ; and the difficulty in the way of establishment would lie not so much in a general spirit of hostility to 188 RURAL STUDIES. increased taxation, (though that spirit, as I have hinted, lias a wonderful catlike watchfulness,) as in the private jealousies that must be harmonized before any large real estate improvement is practicable. I defy any benevolent gentleman, in a town of thirty thousand active, and newspaper-reading inhabitants, to propose a scheme for a public garden or park, upon a designated spot of ground, without starting an angry buzz of opposition from other equally benevo- lent gentlemen, who see in it only a device to bring about the rapid appreciation of property which is not their own. The quick-sightedness with which the philanthropists of one side of a smallish city will detect flaws in the philanthropy of men living on the other side of a smallish city, is indeed something marvellous. Thus it happens that some brave and honest project for park or water supply, or sewerage, will welter for years in some slough of opposing doubts, all whose obstructing slime is made up of such miserable, local jealousies as I have hinted at. The same traces of satanic influence belong, I think, to the philosophers who make up our national Congress, so that our best bits of legislation seem to come upon us by ac- cident, when our wisest legislators are asleep, or tired, or worse. In the days of our present civilization and educa- tion, it is hardly to be doubted that the majority of LA YING OUT OF GRO UNDS. \ 8 9 intelligent voters in any considerable town would declare for the utility of a public park or garden ; but whether their wishes can be made effective for the establishment of such a result is another ques- tion, and one which must drift into the arena of town politics where I leave it ; proposing only to discuss here some of the aims of such an endowment, some of the possibilities in that direction, the conditions of its success, and permanent usefulness to the masses. Place for Parks. IHlRST of all, a public park should be as near as possible to the town ; best of all, perhaps, if in the very centre of the town, or, as in the case of some of the old walled towns of Europe, girting it with a circle of green. I hardly think any public gardens of the world contribute more to the health and enjoy- ment of the adjacent population than those of Frank- fort-on-the-Main, which lie all about their homes, and which are planted upon the line of the old fortifica- tions. Even the ill-kept walks upon the ancient walls of Chester and York (in England), by their nearness to the homes of the people, and by the delightful out- look they offer, are among the most cherished prome- nades I know. But with us, who have no girting 190 RURAL STUDIES. Avails, and rarely vacant spaces about our commercial centres, these pleasant breathing-places must be pushed into the outskirts of our towns. I say rarely vacant spaces ; but while I write, there occur to me instances of beautiful opportunities neglected, one of which, at least, I will record. The thriving little city of Norwich, in eastern Connecticut, is situated at the confluence of two rivers, which form the Thames. Along either shore of the Yantic and the Shetucket, the houses of the town are picturesquely strewed in patches of white and gray ; but between the rivers and the lines of houses, the land rises into a great promontory of hill toward the east, forming a Sal- vator-Rosa cliff, shaggy with brush- wood and cedars toward the south and west, a steep declivity on which the swiftly slanting sward-land is spotted with out- cropping ledges ; to the north a gradual slope falls easily away to the great plains, where lie the bulk of the suburban residences. Within twenty or thirty years the whole upper surface of this central hillock might have been secured for the merest bagatelle, and would have made one of the proudest public prome- nades imaginable, accessible to all walkers from the south and east, and to all equipages from the north, and offering level plateau for drives that would have commanded the most enchanting of views ; but the occasion has gone by ; inferior houses hold their LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 191 uneasy footing on the hill-side, and a gaunt-jail, which is the very apotheosis of ugliness, crowns this picturesque height. Another little city, that of Hartford, in the neigh- bor State of Connecticut, has made the most of its opportunities by converting into a charming public garden a weary waste of ground that lay between its railway station and the heart of the city. The op- portunity was not large, to be sure, but it was one that needed a keen eye for its development, and the result has shown that commercial thrift may not unfrequently take its lesson with profit from the sug- gestions of a cultivated taste. There is many a growing town having somewhere within its borders such unsuspected aptitude and capability, that only needs an eye to discern it, and the requisite enterprise to develop in the very heart of the population a garden and a public promenade that would become a joy forever. It must be remembered, furthermore, that it is quite impossible to make such transmutation of waste and unsightly places into an attractive area of garden-land, without increasing enormously the taxable value of all surrounding property. I recall now, in one of our most thriving seaside cities, a great slough of oozy tide-mud of many acres in extent, shut off from the harbor front by a low rail- way embankment, showing here and there a riotous 192 RURAL STUDIES. overgrowth of wild sedges, foul with heaps of garbage, uninviting in every possible way, and yet lying within stone's throw of the centre of the city. Sandy highlands, almost totally unimproved, flank it immediately upon the west disposed there, as it would seem, for the very purpose of furnishing easy material for the filling in of the flat below. A few thousands would accomplish this, and judicious plant- ing and outlay would in three years' time establish a charming promenade or garden in the centre of the sea-front of the town, and there is not one of the adjoining pieces of property but would be doubled in value by the operation. The neglect of such oppor- tunities, whether due to miserable local jealousies, or, as often happens, to the short-sightedness and indif- ference of municipal authorities, is surely not compli- mentary to our civilization. The term " near to town," in these times of horse railways, has rather a relative than positive signifi- cance. Three miles, by a fair, broad avenue, upon which well-equipped cars arc making their rounds every half hour of the day, is not half so large a distance for either the laboring or the business man to compute, as a mile and a half of ill-kept, old- fashioned turnpike road. The truth is, that citizens of sleepy towns in the interior are losing their reckoning about distances ; LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 193 they have not been educated to metropolitan esti- mates. The Wall Street man sneers at two miles of walk before business ; your small broker of a country city, on the other hand, advertises for a tenement " within half a mile of the post-office." I never see such an advertisement but I think some Rip Van Winkle has just waked, and that his friends should give him a combing and nursing. Ready accessibility is the true measure of distance in our day, and a town park must be easily accessible to all classes. It must be a matter in which the humblest citizens can take pride and comfort. Those cities which have considerable open spaces in the shape of" common," " green," or " squares," scattered here and there, are the last to wake to any need of a park which shall give drives, and such sources of diversion as belong legitimately to a public park. The central commons and greens may do very well in the early stages of a city's growth, but there comes a time when the municipal edicts forbid ball-playing and cricket, at which date there is reason to plan some larger forage ground for our youthful sports. And it is precisely this forage ground for the developing muscle of Young America that the town park should furnish. Cricket ground, base-ball ground, and parade ground for the ambitious troops of the municipality should be as sedulously cafed for 9 194 RURAL STUDIES. as a good roadway for carriages. A skating pond would belong fitly to the requirements, and, if no river or harbor offered better space, an opportunity for boating would be wisely included. It is not supposed that a feasible spot of ground in the neigh- borhood of most cities can command and make good these requirements. But much more can be done than is imagined if the best available talent is secured for the work in hand. Even in our fast days, it is quite wonderful to find what a multitude of people go to sleep upon advantages which, judiciously ordered, would make them rich. There is many a river valley, in the close neighborhood of cities, covered now with rank and unprofitable grasses, over which, at small cost, might be given flow to a lake that would wash on either shore the banks of high- lands, admirably fitted for drives, and already clothed with the forest growth of half a century. Equipment of Public Gardens. AS I have already said, it is requisite that a town park should offer a charming drive ; so far charming that every townsman will feel it incum- bent on him to give each stranger guest a full view of its attractions. These latter must lie, either in commanding views of the town itself and its environs, LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 195 or in landscape effects which have been wrought out by skill and attention in the park itself. Neither Hyde Park nor the Bois de Boulogne offer any com- manding range of view ; the delights all lie in the neatly kept roadway, the flanking lakes and parterres, the bright, green slopes of shaven turf; at Richmond Hill or on the Pincian at Rome, on the other hand, you forget the roadway, you forget the bits of pretty turflet, you ignore the copses, you are careless of the odor of flowers, for your eye, carrying all your per- ceptive faculties in its reach, leaps to the fair vision of flood and field and trees, which sweep away, in sun and in shadow, to the horizon. Undoubtedly if the surface of adjoining country will permit, it will be far less expensive to establish a park whose charm shall lie in exterior views than one whose attractions shall consist in what the pro- fessional men call (by use of an abominable word) its gardenesque features. Yet, with such economic pur- pose, it will never do to go too far in the country. It must never be forgotten with us that the men of equipages are by no means the only class who are to participate in our aesthetical progress ; the town park, to have its best uses, must not only be within easy reach by walk or by the street tramway, but it must have, too, its spaces of level ground to allure the cricket or the base-ball players. Areas should be 196 RURAL STUDIES. ample enough to prevent the possible interference of these sports, (\vhich every sensible township would do well to encourage,) with the enjoyment of a quiet drive. While there is no need for making the wood of a public park a complete arboretum, I think that special care should be taken to give specimens of all the best known timber and shade trees, and that these should be definitely marked with their botanical as well as popular names, so that strollers might come to a pleasant lesson in their seasons of idleness. The particular habits of individual specimens and of forest growths might, I think, be safely and profitably noted as lending additional interest to them, and creating a sort of fellowship with the trees. Every forester knows that oaks and maples of the same species have yet idiosyncrasies of their own one blooming a full fortnight before its neighbor, and another taking a tawny hue, while its companion is still iii full array of green. In the garden of the Tuilleries there is a chestnut which enjoys the tradi- tional repute of showing leaflets upon the twentieth of March (hence called Vingt de Mars), and the vener- able old tree, well known to every frequenter of the garden, has come to have a character of sanctity by reason of this early welcome of the spring. In a field within sight of my own door, there is a sugar-maple LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 197 which, by some i'ault in the planting, or some inherent defect in the tree, has made little or no growth these last six years, and which every August a full month before the earliest of its companions takes on a hectic flush of color, which it carries, with the buoy- ancy of a consumptive, all through the autumn. This accident of coloring gives an individuality and in- terest to the tree which distinguishes it from all its stalwart and thrifty fellows. I do not think a town park can ever safely be mated with a trotting course ; either the trotting or the park will go under. It is not intended to speak against trotting-courses, or greased pigs, or the climb- ing of greased poles ; but the arena for these sports is not usually such a one as to entice a quiet family man to a park drive. Quiet family men are not, to be sure, very plentiful, and are not much considered nowadays ; they still subsist, however, in sufficient numbers to give a stale flavor of respectability to many of our growing provincial towns, and to shape, to a certain degree, the municipal improvments. The love for fast trotters and for trotting matches is so decided an American taste that a good trotting-course will become a cherished institution in every town of a dozen or fifteen thousand inhabitants. Indeed, I think its establishment may be regarded as a kind of necessary safety-valve, through which unusual speed 198 RURAL STUDIES. and the accompanying howls may be worked off safely without frightening staid old gentlemen who keep to the quiet high-roads. A good flat, a good bottom, and a good amphitheatre of seats, are about all the requisites of an approved trotting-course, and anything picturesque in the way of trees or decora- tive features is an impertinence. There is no fear, therefore, that the trotting taste will ever have large interference with the demand for public parks. It is a common mistake, I think, to imagine that anything like a finical nicety in the arrangement of turf or walks or parterres is essential to the perma- nent and larger utilities of a town park. This, in- deed, involves great cost, and diverts from larger and more important ends. A flock or two of South- Downs, confined by movable hurdles, and under charge of some custodian, who might have his rural cottage at the gate of entrance, would keep turf in very presentable condition. After this, good drain- age, hard gravelled roads subject to monthly rolling and judiciously disposed clumps of shade, are the main things ; following upon which, as the town grows in taste or ability, the parterres of flowers and the arboretum and observatory might be superadded. But quite above and beyond our present question of treatment is the larger one of gaining, in due time, possession of available space. No town that counts LA YIN G O UT OF OR UNDS. 199 upon its thirty or forty thousand inhabitants within the next score of years should neglect it. There can be no loss in its becoming a large landholder within its own territory. If the charming but costly dis- guisements of a park cannot be ventured upon at once, the land may at least be turned over into a town farm, where the town's poor may be set to the work of combing down its roughness or preparing it by slow degrees, earning their own support, mean- time, for the richer ends in view. The scheme is by no means chimerical ; scores of workers, through the less active months of the year, and who are dependent on the town for partial support, might thus be put to remunerative labor upon the town property. A judicious design of a park as a finality upon the land ill question might underlie, in a measure, and qualify the regular farm labors. A well-appointed drive might gradually uncoil itself over the hills and through the cultivated flats, the wood crop out upon the cliffs, and the flowers unfold in their sequestered nooks. It seems to me that a park or garden, grow- ing up in this way by degrees under the tutelage of the town, not fairly throwing off its economic and food-providing aspect until the plantations have rip- ened into fulness, would have a double charm. I commend the suggestions to such boroughs as keep o<_> O i. their town's poor festering in some ill-ventilated alms- 200 RURAL STUDIES. house, with limited grounds, in the foulest suburb of the place. Burying Grounds. TT^VERY considerable town requires, or will -J require at no late day, not only fields for the disport of its living swarms, but other fields (requir- ing exceptional care of their own) for the interment of its throng of dead. Indeed, the living can steal some chance moments of rural enjoyment, by burst- ing into fields and gardens of their neighbors, or by plunging into untamed wilds ; but a man cannot steal a grave : there is no larceny possible to us of some charming spot upon a neighbor's hill-side where our bones may rest. I cannot quite share in what seems to be the popular disposition nowadays to make a favorite, if not fashionable drive of the cemetery. That it should be beautiful, that it should carry report of the delight- some things of every season in its flowers, its fading wealth of leaves, its evergreens, I can well under- stand. But that it should be made voyant, inviting chance-comers, offering views of sea or environs, cheating one into the belief that he is in a well-kept garden, and not among graves, lured thither by views or prettinesses of landscape design and not by the LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 201 memories or the sentiment of the place this is awk- ward. Hence, it seems to me that a sheltered hill- side, a glen, a protected valley, are far more appro- priate than a plain, scalding in the sun, or heights which invite by a great range of exterior views. Tastes will differ widely in this regard ; but it certainly does appear as if the whirl of lively and clattering equipages day after day along the edges of the graves of quiet men would make a terribly per- turbed sleep for them ; and if real grief ever stalk thither to pay a last melancholy tribute, it must needs make a sad public exhibition of itself, or prac- tise a galling reticence. In dealing with the question of a public cemetery, adequate to the needs of a growing population as in the question of a public park, our larger towns show a provoking delay, blinding themselves year after year to the necessities of the case, and deferring positive action, until the needed investment assumes gigantic proportions. There are scores of towns whose cemeteries are absolutely brimming with the dead, who yet take no decisive measures for an increase of the privilege we all sigh for at last of a quiet sleep under trees. Among the requisites for a country cemetery are to be named, I think, first, a distance not exceeding forty minutes drive from town ; next, a feasible soil, and one 9* 202 RURAL STUDIES. not underlaid with ledges. An absolutely dry soil is also desirable, and a sheltered position : for in the last tender offices of respect to the dead, we are exposed to all seasons, and a harsh sweep of northerly winds adds dismally to the chill of a wintry burial. I think we love to catch, too, in such localities, the first warm beat of the spring sunshine, and that we welcome the early violets on graves we know, as we welcome them nowhere else. If with all these requirements can be associated picturesque variety of surface, secluded glens and pools, where, as in Mount Auburn, water flowers show their white regalia, it would be well ; but there should be no sacrifice of the quiet seclusion which should belong to such a spot to compass the garish charms of over-nice and pretentious gardening. Park gardening and decoration is one thing ; that of cemeteries is quite another. Aims, treatment, effects, all should be different. Sombre masses of wood, heavy shadows, these should be present ; above all things, there should be avoidance of those sudden surprises and graceful deceits by which gardeners sometimes win their lesser honors. Great simplicity of design is also essential, not only as in keeping with the sepulchral offices of such ground, but being, to a certain extent, proof against the harm which an elaborate plan must suffer by injudicious planting in private inclosures. LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 203 From the fact last named the giving over of individual lots to private caprices of planting or arrangement, no consummate or finished gardening can, of course, ever be looked for in our cemeteries. The general effect will be at best spotty, and lack coherence. The trail of the principal drives or walks, the establishment of the capital masses of foliage, the ordering and adaptation of the encircling belt, the finish and appointments of the entrance-way these are the objects which will demand taste and skill for their happy execution. To twirl a great labyrinth of serpentine paths through a forest, shaven clean of its under-brush to throw rustic bridges over a floAv of sluggish ditch-water, and to construct grottoes where they sit like mountebanks in the hollows of the hills, is not good gardening for cemeteries if it be good anywhere. If there be great reach of irreg- ular surface, there should be sunny glades to contrast with masses of solemn shade. Rustic or other little- nesses should not pique and arrest attention. The story of the place should be told in the largest letters of the gardener's vocabulary and the interpretation easy quiet seclusion REST. Something might be said of the character of the trees which should be planted in these fields of the dead. The willow is the traditional weeper, and in place ; but such product of the gardener's art as a 204 RURAL STUDIES. weeping ash is a terribly starched mourner, and fihould be banished as an impertinence. All curious and rare exotics, I should say, have no place there ; unless, like the yew or the European cypress, they bear some story of association which chimes evenly with the solemn shadows around. The darker ever- greens generally, are most fitting ; and there is a variety of the Norway spruce, with long, pendulous arms, that is one of the stateliest and comeliest and friendliest of mourners it is possible to imagine. If the Mediterranean cypress would but withstand the rigor of our season, its dark plumes, leading up on either side to the gateway of a tomb, would make a standing funereal hymn. Near to Savannah, in Georgia, and upon one of the creeks making into the irregular shores there- about, is a cemetery called, if I remember rightly, Buena Ventura. In old times, any visitor at the Pulaski used to find his way there, and was richly repaid for the visit. There was no proper " keeping " to the grounds. You passed in under a lumbering old gate- way of unhewn timber ; the paths were not carefully tended ; there was much of rampant and almost in- decorous undergrowth ; the tombs were mossy, and the graves, many of them, sunken ; but great live- oaks over-reached your path, and from their gnarled limbs hung swaying pennants of that weird gray LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 205 moss of the Southern swamp lands festooned, tan- gled, streaming down now fluttering in a light breeze, and again drooping, as if with the weight of woe, to the very earth. There was something mys- teriously solemn and grave-like in it. The gnarled oaks and the slowly swaying plumes of gray told the completest possible story of the place. Had there been no tombs there, you would have said that it was the place of places where tombs should lie and the dead sleep. I have alluded to the scene only to show what and how much may be done by foliage and tree limbs, with their investing mosses, to give character to such a spot. Neither the live oak nor the Spanish moss is avail- able, indeed, in our Northern latitudes ; but there are various degrees of fitness in the trees at command. The yew and the compact-headed Austrian pine, and the balsam fir are always in their sables ; even the much-degraded Lombardy poplar, in full vigor, car- ries a ceremonious, self-possessed stiffness not unbefit- ting ; while the glittering leaved beech, and horn- beam, on the contrary, with their ceaseless, idle flut- ter, are the most unseemly of chatter-boxes. The ash, again, without liveliness of color has great dignity of carriage, and in its half mourning of autumn purple is one of the stateliest and fittest of attendants. I know there is a philosophy which denies the 206 RURAL STUDIES. propriety of seeking for, or multiplying any solemn symbols in connection with death, or the places where the dead lie ; which believes in opening wide and laughing landscapes around graves, and in smoth- ering all memory of the short-lived, funeral black under the gayest of colors. It seems to me, however, that so far as such a philosophy puts its meddlesome liveliness upon church-yards and tombs, it is only a gay hypocrisy. Death is always death ; and the place where the dead lie, always Golgotha. The real grief that goes thither with its bitterness, will be put down by no pelting of bright colors, and mock grief may be mended by what solemnity belongs to the scene. We are not to go through the world mourning, it is true ; but the graveyards, thank God, are only in scattered places. And if we can spend liveliness and cheer over all the rest of our ways, we can surely afford to leave the funereal plumes hanging over the one little path where we mourn. V. ME. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. V. ME. URBAN AND A COUNTRY no USE. Heal Estate Purchase. ~T~\~T~HAT on earth my friend Mr. Urban wants of * ^ a farm of fifty acres, I do not know ; but he wants it. At least he says as much ; and I am not the man to dispute him. I feel assured that when he gets it, he will grow red in the face over it, and perspire fearfully, and use language forbidden in the decalogue, and find his pet Alderneys, season after season, very obstinately dropping calves of the wrong sex, and his steers breaking into his cabbage patch. I am confident that he will feel persuaded, before the end of the first year, that all his country neigh- bors have conspired to fleece him, and that the butch- ers are all cut-throats in which opinion he will not 210 RURAL STUDIES. be far out of the way. Notwithstanding this, which I have represented to him in the mildest manner pos- sible, (seeing his infatuation,) Mr. Urban still wants a fifty-acre farm. Of course, he is no farmer ; and his idea of a good farmer is of one who raises large vege- tables, keeps his fences and buildings in Pimlico order, and owns fine stock. It is, I must be allowed to say, a somewhat imperfect idea. He has not the slightest doubt of his capacity to treat land ju- diciously, and make it produce huge crops at a min- imum cost. Plow he expects to accomplish this, I do not know ; neither, I think, does he. Naturally, he does not mean to buy a farm full of rocks ; on the contrary, he wishes smooth land rich, of course, with no uncouth assemblages of brush gently undulating withal giving fine views not hard to till, with serviceable buildings upon it in a healthy region, convenient to schools, rail- ways, churches, mills, steamboats, and the world generally with ample society in the neighborhood plenty of the choicest fruit abounding in good spring-water no inoumbrances, and at a very low price. All this, he thinks, is to be found easily, any day in the week, and that a moderate sized check will transfer it to his possession. There is a little presumption in the thought ; but, if the advertisements are to be believed, not MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 211 much. City-bred men have indeed rather a pre- sumptuous way of regarding those who live and gain their living by country pursuits. Think of it for a moment : Here (in the country) is your quiet landholder, living in the performance of a humble range of duties rearing brown-cheeked boys, who will make their way to high places of trust to generalships, to governorships, by dint of their sturdy habits of self-denial, and of work, which have belonged to their early life ; and, on the other hand, yonder by the gas-lights is your business man of the city, rearing boys under the shadow of the Broadway shops, who, by reason of no self-denial at all, will hardly arrive at the governing even of themselves (to say nothing of States) ; and yet, such a person counts it no difficult matter, by the gains of only a week's profitable venture, to oust the coun- tryman from his home, and take possession of his lands. It is lamentable to think that the accomplish- ment of such undertaking is so easy. An instinctive clinging to one's home, is a good nucleus for the growth of orderly virtues. I am not going to enter into the question as to whether the better man may grow up under trees, or under brick walls ; it is a large question ; and there is a leafy side to it, which, to me, is particularly engaging : but to-day, our con- cern is with Mr. Urban and his search and its results. 212 RURAL STUDIES. As I have said, the advertisements are most promising so also are the representations of the real estate agents, (the most citified of citizens,) who are loudest in their praises to a new comer of some property, dull of sale, Avhich has been a long time on their books. And here, I wish to interpose, by way of paren- thesis, a suggestion our need of a more intelligent and trustful real estate agency (so far as relates to country homes,) than now exists. It should be in the hands of parties who have lived in the country, who are familiar with the country, and with coun- try resources, and country drawbacks, who by travel and experience are competent to advise, and who by large intercourse with landholders can put an inquirer on the right trail. Still further, it is emi- nently desirable that such party be able to furnish leading hints for whatever changes may be requisite the system of management that may be safely pur- sued, and to forecast the home which is sought for. I am by no means suggesting what is impracticable, or impossible. Older countries have long seen the advantages of such agency as I describe. A man of business in London, who after a series of successes conceives the idea of establishing a country home, is able to put himself at once in communication with certain well-known parties, who (though they may MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 213 not advertise in the journals,) are understood to be in correspondence with such landholders as are will- ing to sell, but entertain a horror of seeing their homes and lands trampled over day after day by whatever curious people may obtain a search ticket from the established and ordinary real estate agents. A home is a home, even to the humblest ; and to those whose needs demand a peremptory sale, the interposition of some adroit agent who makes the visit of a purchaser appear to be only the visit of a curious friend, is an immense relief. Still more important is it that such negotiator be competent to give advice based upon long experience and observation. There is many a man, my friend Urban among them, who, conceiving a longing for the quietude or other indulgences of the country, has yet the most dim and vague notions of what he is really in search of. Is it simply a quiet reach of garden ground which may supply all the enjoyment of the lesser fruits ? Is it sea air alone or mountain air, simply without a thought or care of anything beyond ? Is it shade and trees, and a taste of wild- ness ? Is it the care of fine cattle and the requisite attention and expenditure ? Is it a two months' disport with a model-farm in summer, without much regard to the returns ? Is it the establishment of a country home which shall be complete in all its equip- 214 RURAL STUDIES. ments ? Not one in ten of those freshly smitten with a desire to purchase a country residence can definitely say. So much the more need of one who can intelli- gently, by a few practical questions, interpret their own wishes to the purchasers themselves and fathom the full reach of their country longings. Cost and Returns of Fifty Acres. ' A FARM of fifty acres may be a large thing, or it *- may be a small thing ; small, if remote, and submitted only to the " hand to mouth " culture of a great many of the present holders ; but large, extrav- agantly, if it be favorably placed, and be wrought to the full measure of its capacity by the best appliances of agricultural and horticultural art. Yet the appli- cant at the city ofiices can form no idea of this dis- tinction, nor will his queries in such a quarter put him in the way of arriving at the just grounds of such distinction. If, on the other hand, such applicant (Mr. Urban, we will say,) were to address himself to one of wide experience and observation in such matters, he would probably say: "My dear sir, do you wish a fifty acre farm, that shall return revenue ? Do you wish it as a plaything, for which you will be willing to pay as much annually as for your opera-box and its attendant expenses ? Do you wish to engage MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 215 your sympathies in the: affair, and demonstrate some improved method of culture at whatever cost ? Finally, do you wish it as a summer home, enjoyable through all the time of leaves and fruitage and not a cancer upon the purse through all the remaining months of the year ? " Well not one in ten who talks vaguely about having a farm a country place is prepared to answer intelligibly and directly such questions. Can you who have sometimes thought of giving your children breathing-room, under trees ? Can you who have sometimes thought of glorifying your busi- ness successes in Wall Street, by a tasteful home in the country ? Can you publisher, jobber, grocer, bookseller, tailor who have some vague notions of eventually giving dignity to your gains by establish- ing a home under elms have you any precise idea of what you propose ? What limit of land what range of landscape what fertility of soil what addenda of convenience ? I don't think, for a moment, that you have ; I don't think that one in a hundred has, who amuses himself in dreamy hours with forecasts of a pleasant home in the shade of oaks, and in the midst of corn- lands, which, in boyish days, he knew only too well. The man who is eager for a town purchase of house or lot, has very distinct notions (ordinarily) of the 216 RURAL STUDIES. size lie covets the number of rooms requisite of the household service he will possibly require, and of the probable range of his annual costs in maintain- ing the same. But, with respect to the country, whenever his aspirations turn in that direction, he is in a maze. He counts it an indulgence, which, like city indulgences, has no determined laws of cost ; it is another opera-box, of which the trees make the upholstery, and some Killarney manager presents the bills in brogue. Tinder these conditions of uncer- tainty, an intermediate agent, who can interpret in some measure a man's own indefinite wishes, and by a few direct, practical questions, reduce his intentions to form, is eminently needed one, moreover, who, by his own experience and observation, can suggest the costs and capabilities of farm, garden, or country seat, and enable the purchaser to take a complete trade view of his proposed enterprise. To return to Mr. Urban his negotiations must be largely through the established real-estate offices, or by personal reply to the newspaper advertise- ments. These leave him in a dreary muddle. Those who have had experience, know why, and how. The established agencies take no account of an applicant's tastes, or positive wants, (if he were able intelligibly to express them,) and are only anxious to make sale ; the advertiseinents are naturally exaggerated to a MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSJS. 217 degree that makes the consequent search a ludicrous bore. One " charming place " is next to a great reach of marsh land, where every informant is pale and quaking with the ague ; another is so beset with rocks that it would require double the cost of pur- chase to clear a smooth bit of greensward at the door. Such incongruities naturally shock a man of com- mercial susceptibilities if he proposes to carry them to the country with him. Mr. Urban does ; and, fretted by an accumulation of mischances, and of misdirections, as well as by not a little conscious ignorance of his own, appeals to me for certain prac- tical hints in way of guidance putting his appeal indeed in the shape of a rambling talk, which I take the liberty of digesting into this formulary of ques- tions : 1st. How much ought fifty acres of land, with respectable farm-house, and out-buildings, within accessible distance say not over three to four hours from the city to cost ? 2d. Will the possible or probable revenue from such a farm be sufficient to keep it in good order best of order, say so that it shall not become a bill of expense ? 3d. What crops or treatment will insure such return, without destroying altogether the picturesque 10 218 RURAL STUDIES. effects, or requiring me to cut every tree upon the place ? 4th. Is it possible to secure any decent man, with- out too big a raft of children, to supervise such a farm live in the back rooms keep the smell of his cabbage stews sufficiently under cover, so as to enable me to enjoy a country home in-doors (when 1 wish) and relieve me of all the fatigue of details ? 5th. Supposing I purchase such a place, and stock it to my fancy, and reorganize the old house, or possibly, build a new one, and Mrs. Urban grows tired of it all, in a year, or two, or three, is there any hope of my getting back my purchase money and costs, or a sum ranging within fifty per cent, of the same? 6th. What are the best cattle to keep, (supposing I purchase,) and are any pears better upon the whole than the Bartletts, and do you know of a maid of all work, who would milk upon a pinch, and stay away from mass for a fortnight ; and is the patent churn, on show at the corner of Broadway and Cedar street, really a good article ? 7th. Which do you think the best for eggs, the Brahma Poutras, or the Cochin Chinas, and do they require much care ? 8th. What do you think of Jersey for a country residence ? MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 219 When a man's rambling conversation for two or three hours is capable of digest into such interroga- tive formula?, it is evident that he has some rural intentions ; and I proceed to reply to such (in behalf of my friend Urban) seriously and seriatim. The price of land, within the required distance of New York, is as variable as the weather. There are lands within a radius of a hundred miles of the City Hall, equipped with rocks and trees, which would be dear at ten dollars the acre, and there are lands within the same radius, equipped with rocks and trees, and without architectural improvements, which would be cheap at two thousand dollars per acre. In fact, there is no rule for price of land, as prices rule for other commodities. Lands along the Hudson, for instance, are valued for their river views, or, may be, the social attractions of their neighborhood at prices upon which the best ordered cropping would not pay a rental of one per cent. On the other hand, there are level garden grounds on Long Island to be bought at prices on which eight, ten, and even fifteen per cent, might be made secure by judicious culture. Within four miles of Edinboro Castle there are grass- lands which rent, per acre, for one hundred and fifty dollars a year. Of course, near to great cities, the rental of gardening or grazing-land, is measured by the length of lease if long, it is worth more ; if 220 RURAL STUDIES. short, it is worth less. In general, I should say that any easily-tilled, fairly productive land, within three miles of a good market, (by which I mean any city of twenty-five to forty thousand inhabitants,) ought, upon a ten years' lease, to pay a rental of at least twelve to fifteen dollars per acre. This supposes, however, full agricultural or horticultural aptitude on the part of the manager a qualification which rarely belongs to city purchasers. If such a purchaser looks simply to agricultural rental, as a justification of the enterprise, he can hardly afford to pay more than two hundred or two hundred and fifty dollars an acre for lands adapted to easy tillage. But a largely qualify- ing circumstance lies in the fact that all such lands near to centres of business, take on annual increase of value by reason of the growth of the town. In the last ten years such rate of increase in all thriving neighborhoods might safely be reckoned at six to eight per cent, for each twelvemonth. This is, how- ever, only true of those farm-lands which lie so near to cities or large towns, as to suggest the outlay of new roads across them, or a prospective demand for suburban building lots. In view of this, the sagacious purchaser of a fifty acre farm will not leave out of view if he desires the surest possible increase of his capital the attractiveness of the land for building sites ; and if, as we suppose, his purchase be within MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 221 fifteen to tweuty minutes' drive of a growing city, he will project his improvements, whether of planting or grading, with an eye to its ultimate adaptation for such purpose. Will the farm revenue of fifty acres pay for care and keeping ? Most unquestionably, if there be a reasonable amount of smooth tillable land, and aver- age fertility, and no woful mismanagement. If, however, " care and keeping " are understood to imply the introduction of gravelled walks in all directions, and trenching for shrubbery, agricultural returns will scarcely pay for the weeding and the watering. Luxuries are luxuries all the world over, and must be paid for out of hand. What I count legitimate care and keeping, is such management as shall insure a gradually cumulative fertility to the cultivated portions, a neat and orderly air to the necessary buildings and walks, and a gradual but positive development of those features which con- tribute most to its attractiveness as a place of resi- dence. As for the proceeds of a sudden sale growing out of disgust with the rural enterprise, I should hope that a man or a woman either might be duly punished for such vacillation of purpose. 'Twould be a good ethical result, whatever might be its econom- ics to the Urban adventurers. Any such quick- 222 RURAL STUDIES. coming disgust arises, I think, in the majority of instances, from the lay out of more considerable im- provements than can be thoroughly kept in hand or matured : and it is needless to say that no new pur- chaser will ever pay a large price for gravel walks overgrown with turf, or gullied by the rains, or for shrubbery that leads a starveling life in a great en- compassing circle of foul growth. An inferior plan completed is always more salable than a grandiose scheme but half carried out. Again, ornamental country architecture never brings its cost, save under very exceptional conditions ; therefore the proprietor who forecasts a possible early sale, should be very coy of placing much capital in flamboyant joinery or expensive walks. On the other hand, whatever expenditure con- tributes to the real productive capacity of the land, whether in the way of drainage, or permanent fertilizers, or judicious farm buildings proper, will prompt buyers, and in nine cases in ten, return its full cost. The man who spends five thousand dollars in bringing up the revenue of a fifty-acre farm from four hundred to a thousand dollars a year, is working upon a safe basis ; but the man who expends an equal sum in finical equipments of house and garden, and in the shaping of a great mass of walks and the planting of exotics while the land remains MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 223 at its old fixed point of productiveness may find buyers who will refund the cost of his whims ; but the chances are by no means in his favor. Another large source of disgust with rural under- takings lies in the difficulty of finding efficient and honest directing labor. We have in this country no class of farm bailiffs who, by education and tradition, know their duties, and quietly perform them. We have indeed shipments, from year to year, of stray specimens of this old country class ; but the demo- cratic instinct speedily overtakes them of becoming directors in chief. As good democrats which of course all Americans are we ought not to regret this, but it comes awkwardly in the way of a great many city visions of rural felicitude. Mike, who has toiled far into the twilight, under the shadows of the hills of Wicklow, comes deftly and easily into a ten- hour system, by virtue of which, on some June day your out-spread hay lies smoking under the evening dew ; and Bridget, the stout lass, red-armed, and crimson-cheeked, commended for all work, who has milked the spotted kine in the folds that border Killarney, " many a time, and oft," is quick to com- prehend the American deference for the sex, and explodes upon you with " Shure ! and it's niver a woman's work ! " But, short-comings of subordinates could be borne, 224 RURAL STUDIES. if wo might be sure of the intelligent and faithful direction of superiors. In fault of this from outside sources, Mr. Urban, if he insists upon his fifty-acre experiment, must undertake it himself. And, in that event as I hinted at the beginning I expect to see him grow fearfully red in the face, and struggle against his wife's repinings, and yet, through all if the rural love be strong in him work out results that will be charming in spite of their toils. As for the pears and the Chittagongs, about which, if I remember rightly, my friend Urban insti- tuted some inquiries, I have nothing in particular to say. Bad fruit is due more to lack of good culture, than to choice of bad varieties ; let a man select the best specimens he can find in the city-markets test- ing them by taste secure the trees from a nursery- man who has a reputation to lose, then cultivate with care, and he will never lack good fruit. There is as much dilettanteism in pomology as in old pottery, or in poetry ; a sound man who wearies of the dilettanti chooses what he likes, and gives it protection and reaps his reward. I would as soon think of choosing my fruits by the advices of the horticultural disputants, as of choosing my pictures (if I ever bought them) by the advices of the news- paper critics. The pomologists stand related to those who raise fruit for home enjoyment, and under fair MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 225 garden culture, as the lexicographers and philologists are related to those who use language to enwrap a sermon or a plea ; a finical nicety, if it engross them, will be at the cost of vigor and directness of thought. So of the improved races of poultry. The hen- fanciers arc, I dare say, very worthy people ; far be it from me to pluck a feather from the tail of any of their brood. But to my obscure sense, an egg is always very much of an egg, whatever fowl may have the laying of it. Nor can I detect much difference between a " broiler " of the Chittagong, or any other heathen family, and the " broiler " Bridget may dress, and lay before me at a June breakfast, from the cackling company that have always laid and scratched about the dung-hills of our Christian country. Nay, I take a rather pleasant entertainment in fancying my cheerful and cackling barn-door brood are lineally descended from those veterans of the British roost, who, under the name of Chanticleer, have for so many centuries lifted up their welcome to the morn- ing. There are family associations which are a source of pride ; what if my gallant fellow in white, yonder, with golden legs, and blood-red comb, curveting Avith wings down -spread, and giving a coquettish look to the demure feathered people of his harem, comes in direct lineage from the alert old Chanticleer of the House that Jack Built ? 10* 226 RURAL STUDIES. This is the cock that crowed in the morn, That waked the priest all shaven and shorn, That married the man all tattered and torn, etc. Can we say as much, or fancy as much for an awkward, frizzled creature of Shanghae name, as stupid as the celestials with their hair tied into a cue ? And yet those city gentlemen who have come newly into possession of fifty acres, or ten acres of farm land, are prone to distress themselves with the notion that they have not precisely the right breed of cattle, or hens, or geese. Their griefs (allow me to say) for they will have them will not rest upon so inconsiderable a base as a wrong choice of animals ; any of God's creatures will be good enough, if they give them requisite care. Question of Localities. "T PERCEIVE even now that I have not replied * to every query of my friend Urban. " What do I think of New Jersey as a residence ? " I know a great many excellent people in New Jersey entirely unconnected with its railway system. I have reason to believe that there are villages in the retired parts of the State where the houses and door- MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 227 yards are neat, and where the streets are not filled with offal and mangy dogs. Fifty acres of land in New Jersey soil being equal will bear as good corn or rye as in any other spot of our common country where the sun shines with equal force. I do not indeed think that " Vineland " is soon to become our Eden, or that, if we ever have an Eden, it will lie in New Jersey. If a Euphrates were ever to spring up in the Highlands, I doubt much if it could ever cross the Central or the Camden and Amboy track without good lobby management. All this, however, is said jokingly. There are good farms in New Jersey ; there is most excellent garden-ground, and best of all one can come from it easily to New York. There is no reason why its near lands should not become the paradise of fruiterers, and of vegetable-growers for the market. Its general surface short of the moun- tains, or of the beautiful rolling lands of Monmouth does not invite those who look for the picturesque as well as the practical. But what boots it, talking of this or that locality ? If a man has really made up his mind to be shaven, it matters little on which half of his chin the operator shall commence. If Mr. Urban, or any other good friend, is determined to possess himself of fifty acres, he will undoubtedly have associations which will 228 RURAL STUDIES. draw him in this or that direction, against all reason- ing upon the mere merit of the land. Agriculturally speaking, it does not much matter where the amateur farmer may go. I do not say this ironically, but in full soberness. If a man, used to city life and its lusts, has made up his mind to redeem himself, so far as he may, by grappling with fifty of God's acres, and by putting the stamp of his energy and toil upon them, he cannot go Avrong, wherever, within reasonable distance, the hills and the meadows are spread out. Earnest work will declare itself effectively, on the harsh rocky banks of the Hudson, or upon the unctuous level of Jersey. This much, however, is to be said practically the nearer a man can establish himself to one of those great avenues of travel that is, toward Philadelphia, Boston, or Albany the more sure he will be of finding sale in the event of failure, and the more sure of ready and constant market for whatever produce he may have on hand. I am perfectly well aware that my friend Mr. Urban (and others of like humor) will insist that he has no intention of selling out or of marketing ex- tensively. It is pleasant, however, to feel that we can do such things if we choose. From my own observa- tion I am persuaded that the man who has no chance of selling his country place or his farm is always a MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 229 great deal more eager to sell than the one who has opportunities flowing upon him weekly. Above all things, it is imperative that a proprietor who would enjoy to the full a delightful country place, or a well- managed farm, should allow others to enjoy it with him. By which I mean, that his improvements and successes should be in the sight of people, and not in some utterly inaccessible locality, out of view and out of mind. To plant charming shrubberies and lay down cap- tivating walks in quarters that no one can reach but by a break-neck scramble over abominable roads, is like making a fine speech to empty benches always an ungrateful thing to do, as many a good man knows. Half the charm of the river-bank places along the Hudson lies in the fact that they, with their surroundings, really form a part of that great water highway of travel gazed upon every summer day by the world that floats downward and upward through the mountain gates of the river, dotting the green hills with lessons which every floating traveller may read massing their showy rhododendrons so that thousands from below and above may see the pink crown of blossoms. The boat, the car, those hundred eyes, do not steal away any home-like pri- vacy ; they equip it rather with a new content the content that comes of seeing others enjoy what we 230 RURAL STUDIES. enjoy and take a pride in ourselves. Never a man yet, no matter how crotchety or unassailable, who possessed farm or garden, into whose management his pride and care had largely entered, but enjoyed seeing it admired. The eye of the world upon a man's work is healthfully stimulative. He who denies it, and plants for his solitary gratification only, has a weak spot in his head or heart, and deserves to go crazed in an island-garden. There are charming places, so far as banks and trees and water view go, along the far away shores of Long Island, but it is a long day's journey to reach them over a road where nobody travels. There are very grateful, inaccessible nooks in Rockland County, where " A hermit hoar, in solemn cell," might wear out life's " evening gray," very jollily ; but no man who wants his flowers to catch a new tint from the reflected grace of fair faces, Avishes to bury himself there. There are magnificent grazing farms in the wilds of Greene County, great waves of rolling hills, great Tors of shaggy, shaded cliff, great wealth of brooks, purling amid the undulations of the meadows, great rampant crests of forest growth, with century-old hemlocks piling out of them their won- drous pagodas of green ; but who wants the torture of a drive over the Catskills to enjoy it all ? Mr. Urban does not, neither do I. MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 231 Testimony of Experts. AT the risk of iteration, and in the hope of throw- ing all possible light upon the subject under notice, I propose the examination of a few fifty-acre farmers, who shall represent respectively the stock- breeder, the amateur, the business man, the philoso- pher, the practical man and the trader. Mr. Urban being in company in whose interest the inquiries are made we first encounter Mr. Up- den, of Deep-Dale, well known among Committee men, and eminent at Agricultural Fairs. His system is simply to breed cattle of pure blood. We venture the query if Mr. TJpden's stock is fed mostly from the land, or if he is in the habit of buying food ? Witness. " I buy, I should say, from twenty to forty tons a year." Mr. Urban innocently asks if Mr. Upden makes sufficient butter for the consumption of his family ? The question is almost resented. " Butter-making is an annoyance. Six or seven hundred dollar cows can be put to better uses. I prefer to buy my butter." Query. " We are to suppose then, I think, that 232 RURAL STUDIES. the milk of your cows goes to the rearing of your young animals. Does this prove sufficient ? " Witness. " In most instances ; we sometimes, however, purchase native animals to suckle our choice calves." Query. " With the milk from two cows, I sup- pose, you are able to rear a fine calf? " Witness. " That is our intention." Query. " Is it your opinion that a calf so reared will be able to sustain itself in good condition with- out extra feeding for a series of years ? " Witness. " I do not understand the term ' extra feeding.' It is our way to give animals whatever they will eat at whatever cost." Query. " Is there an active demand for your cattle from practical farmers ? " Witness. " Not so large as we could wish. We sell mostly to breeders." Query. " Are the prices you receive remunera- tive ? " Witness. " We endeavor to make them so ; though with a large stock on hand we are compelled to pass off some animals on private terms." Query. " Have the results been such as to war- rant you in recommending to a friend a similar course of agricultural operations ? " Witness. " If the friend had large capital, and an MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 233 assured income, independent of his land, and had a taste for fine cattle I think I could do so." All which is eminently discreet : but if to a taste for fine cattle, any rurally inclined gentleman adds a thorough knowledge of them, and aptitude in the handling of them, and a keen eye for the apprehension of their good or bad points, (such as few men are born to,) he may become a successful breeder. But to undertake such a business with only the flimsy basis of a love for fine cattle, will prove a very profit- less venture. The next witness is a stout man, partially bald, who carries a bandana pocket-handkerchief and per- spires freely John Heaviside, of Three-Hills Farm : retired from business going on five years. Query. " Would Mr. Heaviside be good enough to detail in brief his system with respect to stock and labor ? " Witness. " Well upon my word, there's not much of a system. I keep a pair of carriage-horses, and a little roadster for the boys, and a pair of mules, and a pony and a saddle-horse, and we sometimes hire a neighbors oxen. Then there's a cow or two and their calves ; and there's a foreman, and gardener, and coachman, and five out-door hands in the summer." Query. " What are your crops principally, Mr. Heaviside ? " 234 RURAL STUDIES. Mr. Heaviside dabs the top of his head reflec- tively, and replies : " Grass and vegetables, I should say, mostly ; and fruit we've plenty of fruit." Query. " Do the sales meet the expenses of the place ? " The witness gives over for a moment his exercise with the bandana and stares blankly at the questioner. Query. " You sometimes make sales ? " Witness. " Oh ! yes four hundred quarts of blackberries, for instance, the last season. Upon my word and honor it's true." Query. " Anything further ? " "Witness. " Not that I know of. Mrs. Heaviside could tell better. She claims the sales for pin- money." Query. " What would you reckon the probable cost of maintaining a farm of fifty acres ? " Witness. " I should put it at four thousand a year taking one year with another." Query. " Have you much shrubbery, and have you laid down gravel walks ? " Witness. (Dabbing cheeks and head with his bandana.) " Ouf ! miles ! " Mr. Heaviside, upon being interrogated on that point, testifies that there is no lack of vegetables ; indeed, he is of opinion that enough are grown for ten families ; why so many he is unable to say ; he MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 235 believes the garden was laid out with a view to such an amount, and of course, it is necessary to keep the garden planted. On being asked if he could suggest any more economic method of management than that at present pursued he seems at first at a loss ; but being pressed for an answer " would allow forty acres of the land to grow up to wood, and drop the gravel-walks." In the event of putting his farm on the market, could the witness hope to secure the original price with the sum for improvements added ? The witness has his doubts. " Could he realize the original sum, with half the cost of improvements added ? " (His farm is within a half-mile of a very lovely and stagnant little town of Berkshire County.) Mr. Heaviside loses his temper and retires, being joined by a young lady in large hoops, who cheers him with the sight of a lovely new carnation, and a charming little assemblage of the new Mathiola Bicornis. The next informant is Mr. Limbold, a lithe, wiry gentleman of great self-possession, and a refreshing breeziness of manner. He has purchased a farm of fifty acres within three hours of New York ; he spends three months there in mid-summer ; his wife prefers Newport, but 236 RURAL STUDIES. yields to him in consideration of a fortnight at the close of the season at the Ocean House. He has not built not he ; he has added a wing sufficient for his summer accommodation. He has not employed a Scotch gardener not he. The old owner, a practical farmer, remains in charge under agreement to share sales, the owner furnishing half stock and equip- ments. He transports his household the tAventieth of June ; and by contract, shares the farmer's larder, adding such private delicacies as he chooses. He secures all his winter butter and poultry, and makes sales of the excess, on partnership account, to well- known dealers. The farm is not a moth to him by no means. Returns fully balance the interest ac- count ; and the farm, lying within three miles of H thriving city, is rapidly appreciating in value. In view of this fact, he expends five hundred a year in such improvements as will make the land more desirable for suburban sites, and in five years hence is confident of quadrupling his money. Mr. Urban, who has wavered under the Heaviside story, is as cheerfully intent upon his farm as ever. The next witness is a philosopher and reformer. He believes in drainage deep drainage in sub-soil- ing, in phosphates, in science, in anything almost which is told him seriously. The consequence is, he has bought a farm that no one else would buy, and MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 237 has put contrabands and refugees of various sorts at work upon it, until he has expended more money to the acre than was ever expended for agricultural purposes in Orange County before. Mr. Creed is asked at what depth he is accustomed to plant his drains ? Witness. " Four to five feet ; six feet I think is better." Query. " And if you come upon rocks ? " Witness. " I blast them out." Query. ." And you find a profit in this ? " Witness. " It's thorough." Mr. Creed has possibly misapprehended the ques- tion. Witness. (Sharply.) "Not at all. I can't tell about profits ; we hear too much of profits ; thorough- ness is better. Farmers ought to do things thorough- ly. I try to show them how." " May we ask," resumes Mr. Urban, " what are your principal crops, Mr. Creed those on which you place your main reliance ? " Witness. " I am trying at present some experi- ments with vetches, and a new pumpkin, recom- mended very strongly by Dr. Newton, of the Agri- cultural Department. I am also making trial of a few new grapes. I have still some faith in the Dios- corea Batata." 238 RURAL STUDIES. Query. " Would Mr. Creed recommend to an enterprising young man, or to a middle-aged man, anxious to secure a home, the purchase of a fifty-acre farm, and thorough drainage of the same ? " Witness. " I would recommend to an honest young man to keep as clear as possible of the cities ; country gains are honest if they are small ; city gains are devilish." Query. " Are we to understand, Mr. Creed, that the means which you have lavished upon your farm operations are derived from the land ? " Witness. " I shall be happy, gentlemen, to further your agricultural investigations ; if you confine your inquiries to that class of subjects, I shall be glad to make reply." Query. " Is it your opinion, Mr. Creed, that a man of energy and industry, who should purchase a farm in a retired district, and carry out your system of thorough drainage and blasting, would lay the base of permanent pecuniary success ? " Witness. " I care very little about pecuniary suc- cess. We hear altogether too much of it. I think a young man of industry and good habits might secure a competence by hard work anywhere in the coun- try ; and with a competency any man ought to be content. I am inclined to think that I should recom- mend land with as few permanent rocks as possible." MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 239 Mr. Creed, it appears farther, is the owner of quite a number of pure-bred animals ; but his fences falling into a bad condition in the course of his improvements and experiments, (some of these being in the shape of patent hurdles,) and his neighbor's male animals being intrusive and aggressive, he is not quite sure of his calves. His sales, therefore, have been subject to the discount of the uncertainty, and have brought only fair butcher's prices. It is hinted that the adjoining farmers laugh at Mr. Creed's operations. But in what age have the rustics failed to laugh at a philosopher ? We next encounter in the person of Mr. Sloman an eminently respectable man, of the upper part of Westchester County, who has managed his farm oi fifty acres for the past thirty years. Query. " Do you find a profit in farming Mr. Slo- man ? " Witness. " Waal, that's as folks count profit. These 'ere chaps that go into heavy wallin' and drainin' may be don't count profit as we count it. If I keep my family along, and buildins in repair, and put up five or six hundred dollars, I call it a pooty clean thing." Query. " Would you tell us, Mr. Sloman, some- thing of your method ? " Witness. " Waal, there an't much method to 240 RURAL STUDIES. speak of. We keep ten or twelve cows through the summer, accordin' to the season ; if hay is lookiu' up, 'long in the fall, we fat an old cow or two, and may be a pair of cattle. We mean to keep our mowin' up and put eight or ten acres 'cordin' to the season in corn and potatoes." Query. " Potatoes are a pretty good crop, are they not, Mr. Sloman ? " Witness. " There an't no better crop, if a man is nigh enough to market to send in a hundred bushels a day without worryin' his team." Mr. Sloman being asked his opinion in regard to the improved systems of husbandry, replies : " Waal, I've pooty much made up my mind that books is books, and farmin' is farmin'. I've nothin' to say agin these gentlemen that like to spend money a' ditchin' ; I've nothin' to say agin a good tidy crittur, and you may call her Durham, or you may call her what you like. If she fills a pail she comes up to my idee of a good critter; if she doan't she doan't. That's my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong ; but that's my way o' lookin' at it." An effort is made to bring back the inquiry to a more definite issue by asking Mr. Sloman " what he thinks about the labor question ? " Witness. " Waal, good help is ruther skerce." Your intensely practical man under question MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 241 iftmsed to formal investigation is apt to bring forward the awkward facts that confront him every day, without measuring their relations. It appears in the end that Mr. Sloman pays out some four to five hundred dollars a year for labor in addition to his own and that of his boy of fifteen. Reckoning this at five to six hundred more, it would appear that the needed labor upon a farm of fifty acres under ordinary cultivation would be not far from a thou- sand dollars. Meeting this, and the taxes, and " put- ting by " some four or five hundred from his returns, the country proprietor thinks he is doing a very fair thing. When a man of this stamp is confronted with such statements as appear from sanguine "Western vineyardists, about a return of six thousand dollars per acre for land in vines, " prepared with the plow at a cost of twenty-five dollars the acre," he simply puts a fresh quid in his cheek, and indulges in remarks not creditable to the veracity of the vine- yardist. I am inclined to think that the real truth lies mid- way between the parties. Mr. Sloman, with his old- fashioned habits, is not accomplishing the half that ought to be accomplished with his fifty-acre farm ; the not un frequent extraordinary representations of vineyard product, on the other hand, I cannot but regard as palpable exaggerations. I have not the 11 242 RURAL STUDIES. slightest notion that a vineyard in Missouri how"- ever exquisite the vintage will return the treble per acre of the Lafitte estate of Medoc. There have been exceptionable periods as in the days of the raorus multicaulis fever when an acre under ordi- nary cultivation would yield its three or four thou- sand dollars of profit ; but whoever makes such excep- tional returns, whether due to wine or mulberry delirium, the basis of cei'tain and continued horticul- tural successes, is either blinded by his enthusiasm, or wantonly misleads. I record one other fifty-acre experience. Mr. Stimpson, an active, red-bearded, prompt man, is understood to have purchased some eight years since, a farm of some forty to fifty acres, within a couple of miles of the thriving city of , for the sum of twenty thousand dollars. Does he recommend a simi- lar purchase to such inquirers as Mr. Urban ? Witness. " If Mr. Urban can make as good a pur- chase unhesitatingly." Mr. Stimpson has found his farming profitable then? The witness begs to correct a possible misappre- hension ; his farming was not profitable. He had undertaken the raising of vegetables ; but he could never find a grocer or vegetable dealer who would pay him half price for them ; he undertook the small MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 243 fruits, but between the destruction of baskets, small prices, or the payment of vagabond berry-pickers from the town, (who trampled down more in value than they gathered,) he abandoned that scheme ; he thinks he never bought a cow, but he paid one third more than she was worth, to the shrewd neighbors who hemmed him in ; if labor was twenty dollars a month, he could never get it under twenty-five ; his breeding sows inevitably devoured the half of their litters, though his watchfulness was constant (per- haps too constant.) As for horses, he never bargains for one now, but he insists that he should have a spavin or two and the heaves, and by strict insistance on this, he has the satisfaction of knowing some of the defects in advance a satisfaction he never had until he adopted the rule ; he had undertaken the sale of milk in a weak moment of resolve, but he found he was selling large quarts, whereas his rivals in the traffic were all selling small quarts he was selling pure milk, and the neighbors were cooling down their overheated cans with an infusion of cool spring water. In short, Mr. Stimpson declares that between dis- contented and overpaid laborers he could not realize four per cent, upon his purchase, with his own super- vision and anxieties, (which were immense,) thrown into the bargain. " And yet you would purchase ? " 244 RURAL STUDIES. " This is the explanation," says the witness ; " the increase of population and manufactures, has brought the skirts of the town upon me. I have opened a new street or two ; I have already sold three very charming sites at prices which cover all my original payment, and I have some half-dozen in hand, after the sale of which I shall still have my homestead with some four or five acres, which I can afford to devote to horticultural pursuits ; or if my wife insists and when she does insist she insists pretty strongly I can retire to town with my investment trebled." Results of Inquiry. I HAVE thus brought to view through the vehicle of an imaginary examination and in the interest of my friend Mr. Urban, and similar inquirers all the aspects of a fifty-acre farm purchased at the East, with which I am familiar. The inquiry as herein set forth, may possibly help him to an intelligible decision. There may be learned from it, I think First : that with unlimited means, and the simple wish to lavish them in country employments, it matters very little where a man may establish himself, or what special whim he adopts whether for fine cattle, or horticultural successes ; but he mav be assured that MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 045 he will win no confirmed triumph in either one or the other, without having a personal love for the business and a knowledge of it, or without employing, invari- ably, those who do have such love or knowledge. Second : it may be fairly inferred that a fifty-acre purchase is not necessarily a bad affair, even if the purchaser is not personally competent to direct opera- tions, provided he has the shrewdness to avail him- self of the experience and good common-sense of those who have the competency. Third : it may be learned that all the theories about drainage, and particularly breeds, and the blasting away of rocky fastnesses, and the use of con- centrated manures will avail nothing, except they be under the direction, and subject to the execution of a thoroughly practical man, who has an eye to sale as well as purchase, and to crop as well as tillage. Philosophers, at best, make doubtful farmers : but adventurous philosophers whose brains bristle with theories, and who are without that breadth of knowl- edge which enables a man to compare theory with theory and understand remote as well as immediate relations, make the worst farmers it is possible to imagine. I have a high regard for our agricultural newspapers, and think they are doing far more good than our agricultural colleges (as developed thus far) ; but there are weaklings, who, finding support from a 246 RURAL STUDIES. newspaper correspondent for some ill-digested theory of their own, leap to monstrous conclusions. Fourth : the inquiries will show that a shrewd, old-fashioned farmer no matter where his land may lie may make fifty acres yield fair return, and not involve inordinate expenditure. True, very possibly, that such as my friend Mr. Urban do not wish to live as Mr. Sloman lived, or to labor as he labored ; but his report (which may be well substantiated) is a fair indication of the possibilities of fifty-acre farming. Fifth : it is clearly enough demonstrated that however inapt a man may be at farming or horticul- tural pursuits, if he have the business forecast to make purchase of land near to a growing centre of population, his pecuniary success is made sure. There is indeed a sort of commercial genius of low rank it may be which consists in simply holding on to land when the tide of population surges around it, and the " offers " beat like waves upon it, and spend a great spray of promise over it. In view of all these " findings " Mr. Urban can- not surely be at a loss to regulate his determination. If his means are large, (as largeness is counted now- adays,) and he has a love for fine cattle of best blood, let him anywhere he will, import the best animals, look to their rearing, and he may establish a herd that will carry away the premiums and give him MR. URBAX AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 247 reputation, if they give him no profit. Great repu- tation may go without great profit, though great profit hardly ever goes, in our time, without great reputation. If he have a fancy for architectural and other decorations, it may safely be said that fifty acres will furnish ample margin for the most riotous expendi- ture. It is quite amazing indeed as much to the proprietor as outsiders to Avitness the voracity with Avhich a small place even under elegant and mis- guided direction will consume moneys. The en- grossing tastes of the city are not Avithout a capa- bility in this direction ; but one or t\vo good sand- banks, a small ledge, a plantation, and artificial ponds in connection Avith a rural taste Avhich is ambitious without being experienced, Avill I think absorb money as easily as any outlets of the metropolis. I should strongly counsel Mr. Urban, or any other, Avho feels this inclination possessing him, thoroughly to mature his plans before beginning ; there is no rural Avasting so monstrous as the waste of building walls and removing them, or of excavat- ing valleys and the next summer filling them up. A few judicious hints at the beginning, based on good sense and taste combined, may AA r ork the saving of thousands. I am inclined to think that the pleasant scenes of the Central Pai'k are to be credited (or 248 RURAL STUDIES. charged) with a great deal of riotous or ineffective private expenditure : those who have gleaned all their knowledge of landscape-gardening from that out- of-door school a very charming one in many of its features have left out of consideration the fact, that public expenditure knows no economies, and an army of lazy laborers, dragging at the bosom of the public treasury, may keep in presentable shape the walks and drives which would be ruin to a private holder. The rule of action, as of taste, in public parks, is, to produce the best effects at inordinate cost : the whole question of economy, whether of establishment or future treatment, is eliminated from discussion. With private holders, on the other hand, the great ques- tion is, what effects may be produced at a minimum of cost for their establishment, and at a minimum of cost for their future annual keeping. For these reasons, I think the ruralist who medi- tates a repetition of a bit of the Central Park upon his grounds, will sink fearfully in the mire of costs and of mud. There are charming features in the Park undoubtedly, but the charming things are, most of them, underlaid Avith gold, and will be found to require a golden watering for a long time to come. Again, if Mr. Urban or any other farm adventurer has his chemical or other hobbies which he wishes to carry out, let him not count implicitly upon his MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 249 power to uproot in a season all the practices of cen- turies. There is an obstinacy (after all) in God's soil and seed-beds Avhich humiliates the wittiest lecturers or the best adepts at the retort. If he be thoroughly infected, I only counsel modest expectations a proper humanity toward his working cattle, and the ordinary business foresight of keeping a good balance at his bank when the bills come in. If he has neither short-horn nor landscape ambi- tion, and is not infected with any mania of drainage, or peat, or Liebig wishing only the grateful shade from trees not subject to the visitations of the curcu- lio, and a sweet bowl of milk to his supper, let him not be too eager to discard the offices of those old- style farmers, who, if not adepts in culture, are adepts in saving. Finally, if his rural fantasy is only a short-lived whim that may pass one day if not from his own mind, at least from the more sensitive and demon- strative mind of his help-meet let him buy where he can sell. He may be sure that the trees w r ill lose none of the pleasantness of their leafy rustle if it be spent on ears that listen more eagerly than his own. His porches, his arbors, his walks, his fields will entertain him none the less, if covetous eyes look over the fence at them. There may be something very wicked, but there is something very human in 11* 250 RURAL STUDIES. the cheerfulness with which we watch people break- ing the tenth commandment. Horace has touched the matter prettily in his satire ; but he might have added that the merchant is never so contented, as when he hears the old soldier, or the officer on half- pay exclaim : " fortunati mercatores ! " And the country is never more charming than when AVC read and reading, believe " Agricolam laudat juris legumque pcritus." When Mr. Urban shall have made the skilful lawyer covetous of his fruits, his fields, his walks, he may sell if he chooses. As I said, we never cease breaking the tenth commandment and trying to make other people break it. And pray, who keeps the other nine ? Country Houses and Repairs. ~V~1T7~"HAT man or woman of us all does not some time think of a house that shall one day be a home? Who does not ponder the subject forecast its details outline its surroundings invest it with charms dally with its image, and give to his imagin- ings a most grateful acceptance ? For my own part, I think I began to build, when as yet I stood in daily fear of the ferule of a school-mistress, and when, under a knitted Scotch school-cap, there came MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 251 into my brain a delicious jumble of porches and gables and broad roofs dabbled over with the sunlight and the shadows. I cannot doubt but that very many others have had much the same experience. There is a class indeed (not very large, I should hope) of both men and women, always afloat, who find all their home appetites in those great caravan- saries which we call hotels, and whose local attach- ments must be of a very vague and illusory char- acter : but I cannot fancy such among my readers first, because these have no leisure to listen to what I may say ; and next, because their sympathies must be altogether remote from the topics I discuss. I address myself rather to those who have some day had thoughts of building houses of their own, and who have invested the thought with a thousand homely fancies. A low, gray, irregular range of buildings with a multitude of gables, and here and there a turret lift- ing above them broad windows blazing in the sun- light, and windows darkened with trailing festoons of some wall-creeper an ample hall of entrance, with quaint stairway climbing to some landing lit with an oriel a blue chamber, a green chamber, an oak chamber rambling corridors opening upon yet other chambers a great dim garret with the sunlight flash- ing in through some dormer window upon roof-beams 252 RURAL STUDIES. hung with dried herbs and gone-by clothing and wreck of discarded furniture porches that invite and protect and throw welcome shadows on the door little mantling rooflets of windows that temper the glare of day, and at dusk break the dark mass of building with picturesque outlying angles : I think I have indicated some of the features which belong to most people's ideal of a country home. But who makes them real ? who reaches their ideal in any thing whether in home, in reputation, or success of any sort ? But as regards the country home, what is in the way ? We will suppose that our friend Mr. Urban has possessed himself at last of tlie fifty acres he sought for ; there is wood, there is water, there are meadows, and withal there is an old farm-house, the home of the out-going owner, with its clumps of lilacs, its bunches of syringa, its encompassing mat of green sward. Its site is not, may be, precisely the one that he would have chosen ; but the poor drag- gled bit of shrubbery and the mossy cherry-trees that stand near give to it a pleasant homeliness of aspect, with which any new site with its raw upturned gravels and fresh-planted shrubs must for a long time contrast very painfully. Thus the qiaestion comes up more appealingly every day he looks on it, Will not the old hulk do with a little modernizing? And MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 253 the thought of putting a new, jaunty look upon the old tame outline of building, has something in it that is very captivating. This suggests our first topic of discussion Is it wise to undertake the repair of an old country house ? The builder or the architect, eager for a fat job, will say no : the mistress, with a settled distaste for low ceilings and wavy floors that tell fearfully upon the carpets, will say no : but a practical man will be guided in his decision by the condition of the build- ing, and by the range of the proposed changes. Two or three axioms in connection with this subject it may be worth while to bear in mind. First : it is never quite possible to make an altogther new house out of an old one. Second : it is the most difficult thing in the world to determine in advance the cost or limit of the proposed repairs to an old country house. Third : it is altogether impossible to say in advance that any system of change, however deliber- ately considered, will prove ultimately satisfactory to the (female) occupants. These truisms Avould seem to count against the undertaking to remodel an. old house : yet there are conditions which make it eminently wise, as well in a practical as in an aesthetic point of view. If, for instance, the walls be of stone or brick, and not wholly inconsiderable in extent, it would be bad 254 RURAL STUDIES. economy as well as bad taste to sacrifice them to any craving for newness. In the brick, if well laid, a man may be sure of stanchness ; and in the stone, with the lichens of years upon it, he has a mellowness of tone which not all the arts of the decorators can reach. But even upon walls of such material, es- pecially if they carry the blotches of ag, it will never do to engraft the grandiose designs of the modern builders. If a country liver be really am- bitious to match all the pretensions of the latest arch- itecture in respect of high ceilings and mansard-roofs, let him begin by pulling down ; but if his aim be of that finer temper which seeks to qualify what is old by enlargement of dimensions and by such simple decorative features as shall add a piquancy to the wrinkles of age even as the twist of some sober- colored ribbbon will set off some be-capped and wid- owed face more attractively than all the snow T -flake haberdashery that could be devised let him cherish all the quaintness that is due to years, and seek only to magnify and illustrate it by such enlargements as are in keeping with it, and by such sober adornments as shall seem to be rather a restoration of old and lost graces than the ambitious display of new ones. The thing is feasible. It only wants an eye to perceive the need, and a courage to discard the flash carpentry of the day. MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 255 I beg that I may be not misunderstood. I by no means intend to say that the country houses of fifty years ago were in any sense equal or comparable, on the score of fitness or of taste, to the country houses of to-day ; but I do mean to say, that if the walls of such old houses are plumb and true and sound, and repairs are undertaken, it will be far wiser, and call for nicer exercise of skill, to carry forward such repairs with the quaint flavor of the old homely tastes upon them thus working out artistic agreement and adornment together than it will be to belittle the old by a shocking contrast, and wantonly dress our grandame in the furbelows of sixteen. Again, let me lay down another distinction. There are old houses which, in any traditional or artistic sense, are not old houses. They are mere square boxes of lumber or stone, without noticeable feature or flavor. Such, if posssible, may be incor- porated into any new design, without fear or favor ; none but economic considerations will stand in the way. But there are others which, without being accordant in any sense with the artistic designs of the present day, have yet a character of their own a character which any architectural adviser (by the qualities of his profession) is bound to detect ; and which (by the niceties of his profession) he cannot ignore in carrying out his changes. 256 RURAL STUDIES. I know of nothing which an architect can do better (in the way of illustrating his real artistic capacity) than to take hold of one of those old, almost uninhabitable country houses of forty years ago, and, without violating its homeliness, graft upon it such convenient addenda of rooms, porches, halls (gables, possibly) as shall result in a charming homestead, in which the old is forgotten in the new, and the new made racy by a certain indefinable smack of the old. For all such renovation, however, as I have hinted at, stanch walls and sound timbers are essential pre- requisites. If otherwise if the" examining carpenter can thrust his scratch-awl eight inches into the sills if the posts have taken gradual settlement and the ceiling shows gaping rents, any effective remodelling must be of doubtful conomy. Of course there must be a substitution of new sills, and a splicing of the posts which will make even wider gaps in the ceiling. Then comes the pleasant suggestion of the mater familias that the mantels are awkward and must be replaced by something new and tasteful. The adroit mason, being called into consultation, decides that the chimneys are hardly worth the change, and that a renovation from top to bottom would give a large addition of closet room. So the old chimneys come down, with such dirt and breakage and necessary MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 257 removal of partition walls as are surprising. The ceilings, too, must needs show ugly patches, and it would be wiser (the amiable mason suggests) to re- plaster altogether. There must be new hearths too, and in place of an awkward patched floor perhaps it would be better to renew the flooring. This being undertaken, it is found that the sleepers are awry, and to make square work the carpenter suggests a replacement of the flooring timber. This being accomplished, it is hinted by the observant mistress that the windows are hardly in keeping, and the order is given for new frames and sashes. The doors must needs match the windows ; and next there is a sly regret that the plain ceilings should not have their fretting of a town cornice : and so the poor old house is gradually dwarfed with a great burden of pretentious modernisms that it can carry with no grace. Even the mater familias has at last her disappointments, and says quietly : " Sylvanus (it is of Mr. Urban that I write), I think 'twould have been perhaps better to build a new house." Unquestionably. Site and Material. BUT if new, what is to be said of site, of material, of style ? Not absolutely upon a hill-top, I should say, unless there be some great flanking wood 258 Rl'UAL STUDIES. against the north, or such planting and arrangement of outbuildings as shall presently secure shelter : not upon low land either least of all near to any body of fresh water which from artificial causes is subject to great inequalities of level, or which in the heats of September may show a broad margin of quagmire. Lakes are very beautiful, and very healthful too, as God made them ; but when the manufacturers or the water companies tap them, as they will most persist- ently in the seasons of least rain, all their charm and glory go sounding down the sluices. One would say too that a model country house or an enjoyable one should be placed upon such lift of ground as to give a good honest out-look over mea- dow and wood, and streaks of river (if such can be compassed). The near sight of the roofs and towers of a city, too, will give a good every-day feeling of companionship with the world, without the world's noises ; and I am not sure but that a spire or two lifting above trees or among trees will breed a healthful religious habit in a man shining always in. his eye trim, solid sermons not smirched with the dust of groundling conflicts, and (unlike many written sermons) always carrying a good point in them. There should be also some glimpse, if nothing more, of one of the world's great highways ; a near railway is indeed terrific with its din, but if so far away MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 259 that its roar is mellowed by distance, the arrowy flight of its trains gives a pleasant bit of movmeut to the landscape. Best of all, for picturesque effect, is the feathery trail of white vapor which the rattling monster breathes out and which lies floating after him like a line of mist over the whole breadth of the valley-crossing. Such objects as I have indicated for- bid that feeling of solitude which steals upon one immured in a scene of absolute retirement. Trees are never less than trees indeed, and mountains are always writ over with grand lines ; but after all, it is a weary silence that only birds break or the mono- tone of frogs or the locusts. An echo from without, whether from a bell-tower or the sweep of a railway train, is a sort of brazen world's voice booming in, that by contrast makes the bird's notes sweeter, and the leafy rustle of the trees more beguiling. Of the material of which a country house should be constructed I shall say some things which are not in agreement with prevailing opinions. The use of wood is almost universal ; and for producing a certain largeness of effect under limitations of cost, it is by odds the most economical. The necessary conditions too of warmth and dryness may be easily secured by a builder in wood ; and under these cimimstances, where fitness and economy seem combined, it is hardly reasonable to hope for the substitution of any 260 RURAL STUDIES. other material than wood. Yet I venture to suggest, (and shall urge as I best can,) that in a country where stones abound, and they abound in most of the Eastern States, they furnish the most fit material, and their use will subserve a higher if not a more immediate economy. Let me test, one by one, the objections which are commonly urged against buildings for home purposes, of stone. First, on the score of appearance : There are those who object to the rough and unbecoming par- ticolored surface of a house of stone who believe that a " handsome house " (a most destestable collo- cation of words) must have smooth exteriors, and submit to the finical niceties of the painters. This, indeed, is a question of taste, in which all ordinary reasoning is adrift. It certainly seems to me that the real beauty of a country house depends not so much upon nice finish of surface as upon outline, and the agreement of its general tone of color with the surrounding landscape. No lint, surely, can be more agreeable than that of our sand-stones, and the yellow ochreous stain which belongs to the old cleavage of the trap-rock is as rich as that of the quarries of Caen. Then there is the lichened surface of a world of scattered boulders their fresh bright cleavage with its spangles of mica, or the homely brown MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSS. 261 weather stains of myriads of dispersed fragments. And even if agreement of tint be wanting, it is quite feasible to build of wholly refuse stones in such way as to admit of a " rough-cast " covering of mortar, which by the simple appliance of lime-wash and some cheap pigment, may be toned to any color desired : or, by selection of stones for the quoins and window jambs, these might show their natural sur- faces, while the intervals were " rough-cast." A kin- dred though more decided contrast of color might be secured by quoins and window trimmings of brick, while the general surface (sunk two or three inches) might be treated as already suggested. By these devices the rudest stones might be worked into a solid home. Another method, in which comparatively worth- less material may be utilized in the construction of a house, which would have all the warmth and nearly all the durability of a building w r holly of stone, is to blend the timber and mason-work together framing as usual, though with a nice regard to joints and effective panelling, and after this, building in with coarse rubble, to be rough-cast on completion, leaving the timbers exposed. This is the old Saxon country house, of which many examples are to be found in the cathedral cities of England, and of which the Shakespeare house is a notable but very humble type. 262 RURAL STUDIES. Instances of this mode of construction are not common in this country scarcely known indeed at the North ; but quaint specimens are to be seen in Louisiana and in Florida. By the favor of a friend, I introduce a little sketch of a very modest building of this sort in the neighborhood of New Orleans. I am sure that something larger might be done in this way, which would have a very racy quaintness ; and which, with its timber balcony and jutting rooflets and ample porches might offer a very invit- ing show. Brick may also be used effectively for the filling in of such exposed carpentry of the frame ; and if such timber be given a dark chocolate tint, the contrast is very striking and pleasing. I give a sketch of such a house, with the addition MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 263 of a mansard roof and a basement of quarry cbips. Aside from those who object to the appearance of a stone house, there are many who entertain the very 264 RURAL STUDIES. current prejudice that such buildings must needs be damp. If damp, the dampness must be due to faulty construction. Nothing more is needed to secure dry- ness than to " fur off" widely from the stone, and to allow a free circulation of air between the interior and exterior walls. In this way not only is dryness secured, but a degree of warmth in winter, and of coolness in summer, which no wooden walls can maintain. In this connection it may be worth while to note the fact, that the larger part of the civilized portion of the world have been living in stone houses for the last few centuries, and they have weathered the damps pretty courageously. But the objection to country houses of stone is not so much on the score of appearance or of imagined dampness, as of cost. The great durability is hardly taken into our American estimates. There are rural householders who look forward twenty years some who look forward fifty years ; but those who look forward a century and build for the genera- tions to come, may be counted on one's fingers. What builder of our day reckons upon the wants or comforts of his grand-child ? "What boy counts upon living in his father's house ? There are exceptions, doubtless, but the rule is, dispersion sale aliena- tion ; and not one man in a thousand is shaded by the oaks that gave shelter to his grandsire. If I MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 265 build a house which is in sound and saleable condi- tion forty or fifty years hence, what more is needed ? But even under this short-sighted view, is the house of wood more economical than the house of stone ? If, as I have hinted, the projector aims at a finical nicety of exterior surface, there can be no question that economy is largely in favor of the use of wood ; but if a man will have the courage to violate conven- tional tastes in this respect, and be content, nay, be boastful of a rural residence if it offer only agreea- ble outline and afford ample security for all comfort and elegance within, there is a large doubt if stone, if readily accessible, be not the more economic material. A large allowance in its favor is to be made in view of the fact that the painters' bills must needs be modest, and that repairs for an indefinite series of years will be almost infinitesimal. And yet whatever may be a man's plottings in favor of rude material, and a resolute indifference to other beauty of exterior than the natural faces of the scattered boulders in his fields, it is quite possible that the city masons, if consulted, will swell their estimates to the same aggregate that belongs to the nice finish of the town houses. Every experiment, even in the direc- tion of economy, is taxed somewhat by reason of its quality of experiment. To avoid this tax it would be well to seek out 12 286 RURAL STUDIES. some trusty and sagacious foreman who could be brought to entertain some pride in the issue of the proposed scheme and allow him to select the laborers through whom it should be carried into execution on " day's wages." Good country wall-layers, wlto have only a little deftness in the use of the trowel, would be capital co-workers ; and at all hazards, that riffraff of lazy fellows should be discarded who de- light in hammering out ten listless hours in deface- ment of the beautiful natural cleavage of our rocks. Another matter worthy of full consideration is the fact that the cost of a stone house increases rapidly with its height ; the first twelve feet may be easily manageable, but the next twelve involve por- tentous array of scaffolding, and the lifting of large masses of material : economy would thus seem to dictate, where stone is employed, low walls and a large area. Would our country houses lose in pic- turesqueness or in comfort by such a readjustment of proportions ? Form and Color. THIS leads me to speak of form. The man who goes up two flights of stairs every night in the country to his bed, does a very preposterous thing. If not two, why go up one? A large compensa- MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 267 tion of country life lies in the possession of space : no brick wall flanks your rear ; no neighbor's area lies under your dining-room windows ; ample stretch of ground for all architectural fancies surrounds and in- vites you. Why not improve it ? Does character lie in tallness ? The old Romans those luxurious comfort-seekers understood the charm that lay in a cubiculwn, if not a dormitorhnn on the first floor ; and with a door half open (such doors as they had) they might go to sleep, lulled by the tinkle of a fountain in the hall. I don't think any of Pliny's villas were as high as those of a great many (in sight from my door) who don't know whether he Avas Greek or Chinaman. Of course we don't want, in this age of the world, to take our building fancies from the dead men of Pompeii or of Tusculum ; and I have only interpo- lated this allusion to show that a man's dignity is not necessai'ily measured by the height of the house he lives in. All the strong, robber classes of the world, whenever they have lived in houses, have, I think, inclined to tall ones. Such were those German barons who perched their eyries along the Rhine, and the thievish borderers by the Tweed who have left us such precious specimens as " Johnny Arm- strong's Tower." On the other hand, the domesticity of the old Saxons expressed itself in low, wide- 268 RURAL STUDIES. spreading buildings, typical of a quiet life, and of a country abundance that came by peaceful labor. There are robber classes in our day, and they live (many of them) in tall houses ; so do a great many nonest people, for that matter. In fact a great fault of our country architecture lies in its being too am- bitious : it has indeed come out from that old hid- eous conventionalism of two stories, white clap-boards and green blinds ; but it still seeks to startle with something grand something that shall tell a noisy brazen story at the first glance. Yet a fit house and home fit for its belongings fit in size, in color, in outline (like a man of wholly fit character) should w r in upon you by degrees, charming you at each suc- ceeding look by some rare and modest beauties, which are the more attractive because found only after intelligent search. A great, gaunt, cumbrous exterior tells all its story at a glance : you may study it curiously in search of.details, but there is no hearty interest in the study. But a humbler line of roof, so humble that we catch sight bit by bit of its peeping gables, its jutting porches, its low flanking line of offices half hid by shrubbery and half warmed by a blaze of sunlight this, somehow, by a certain relishy smack of domesticity belonging to its vague indis- tinguishable outline and scattered chimney-stacks, piques all the home-feeling in a man. MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 269 A great house, whose picture we have seen in the architectural books, AVC know ; and we admire it coldly, if we admire it at all. But a lesser one less beautiful, possibly, judged by the conventional laws of the art whose quaint assemblage of modest peaks and utlying offices seems to shadow forth the indi- 270 RURAL STUDIES. viduality of the occupant, and is invested with a homely yet cheery quietude this we admire with a livelier interest. If, however, economy in the use of stone for do- mestic purposes demands comparatively low walls, it need not cheat us wholly of our chambers. A French roof, with great perpendicularity to its first pitch, will give airy height for upper rooms and ample ventilating space above ; and such a roof, slated in diamond pattern, will contrast admirably with the natural surfaces of thp boulders below, and the irregular lines of mortar. Again, I do not know anything in the laws of taste, apart from conventionalisms, to which we all yield so implicitly, which would forbid the placing of an upper story of wooden construction upon a ground-story of stone. The idea may be shocking at first, but I ask the reader to fancy for a moment an irregular mass of honest stone building of the height and simplicity I have suggested, pierced with win- dows of irregular proportions (just where needed for the best light). Next imagine a wooden structure of a story in height, with simple sharp pent roof, relieved by a gable half down its length, placed upon the stone overhanging it if you please by a foot in width and length, with its floor timbers rounded into the shape of supporting corbels ; then imagine here MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 271 and there a half-dozen of these floor-beams projecting four feet or more, so as to form a dainty balcony at some upper window, supported by simple timber braces carried down into the stone-work ; others 272 RURAL STUDIES. may project still further, to carry the peaked rooflet of a porch, whose supporting posts shall reach the ground ; the wooden covering may be of sheathing arranged vertically, tinted brown to harmonize with the stone, and the battens of whitish gray to har- monize with the mortar lines below. The profes- sional men might call this very inelegant ; but I am not sure that strict artistic elegance is the best quality for a home in the country. The best qualities in it will be those that call out most promptly a man's sense of domesticity that suggest easy comfort, ample room, odd loitering nooks, indefinite play of fire-light and lamp-light, wide and unpretentious hos- pitality. Above all things a country house, to have its best charm, must look livable. I use an excep- tionable word, but I think readers will catch my meaning. The mere suggestion such as tightly- closed shutters Avill give of rooms kept for sho\v, barred for weeks and months against light and air, will ruin its charm. Its walls, windows, roof, chim- neys, must beam with cheeriness. Its porch must nod a welcome. A terrier frisking through a half- opened door, a cat dozing on a balcony, a dove swooping round the gable, will lend more charms by odds than carefully swept gravel and a statue of Diana on the lawn. There must be no stiff pairing of circle against circle, or of hanging basket against MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 273 hanging basket above all, no such execrable tom- foolery as iron dogs or wooden puppets. A Grecian temple for a coal shed, or a small Strasburg minster for a dog-house, will help largely to make a country house absurd. Nay, an excess of nicety upon the walks, as if the spade and roller of the gardener left it only yesterday and would be there again next morning, takes off the edge of a true home relish > even flowers themselves, if piled up in very trim and very orderly masses, as in the show-rows of a florist, will lose half their power to lend grace ; still worse if they are perched in soldierly array along the porch or veranda, renewed so soon as their bloom fades, like children never allowed to appear even in party dress save under promise of keeping still. Who, pray, can take comfort in lounging upon a porch, where a careless step may break off some floweret of a rare cactus, or enjoy a bit of greens- ward where he fears to knock off the ashes of his cigar ? Who wants to be petrified in a country house, either his own or another's ? I have seen them before now so terribly fine, so prudishly neat, so martinet-like in order, that it seemed to me the very gardeners should be wearing leathern stocks and pipe-clay : a week of such atmosphere would drive me mad. Perhaps I am peculiar in these notions about the 12* 274 RURAL STUDIES. real homishness of a country place. I know there are very good and Christian people who never allow a dog about their premises, or a duck, or a dove, or a stray dandelion upon their lawn, and who buy statuary and rustic iron work (always in pairs) for their grounds, and who keep the front blinds closed, and who manage to give'to their sunniest porch the look of a church door upon week-days ; but why such people should come into the country or live in the country I could never understand. It puzzles me prodigiously. I like hugely that good old English word home- liness. It ought to have again its first meaning. Pretty-faced women have corrupted it. It describes all that is best about a country house. I have ad- vocated the use of homely material and of homely methods, believing these are best fitted judiciously used, to lend real homeliness to a house in the country. Mr. Urbarfs Purchase. MR. URBAN has at last positively succeeded in making purchase of his farm of fifty acres, or thereabout. It has its undulations, its scattered woods, its obtruding cliff in short, a sufficiently varied sur- face to admit of a certain picturesque treatment, MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 275 without great interference with economic results. For Mr. Urban is bent upon having his com- patch however much it may cost him ; and bent upon having his trim lines of carrots, his mercers, his half dozen or more of fine cattle, and his pastur- age, where he may watch his Alderneys at their quiet grazing, or their noontide siesta under the trees. I give, on the next page, a drawing of his farm as it appeared at the time of his taking possession. The house, A, is reasonably sound, and well situ- ated, but small. It will admit of temporary repairs and additions, which he determines upon forthwith. The barn, -Z?, is wholly unfit for his plans, being small, ill- placed, and shaky in its joints. He consults me in regard to the position for a new one, and I advise him to place it in the edge of the mossy old orchard (whose trees are nearly worthless), where a little rise of ground will admit of a cellar underneath both barn and carriage-house. I suggest also in connec- tion with it a cow-stable which shall extend west- ward in order to furnish a protecting lee to his cattle- yard, and to connect immediately with the fields in the rear. The fences are terrible in number, but are for- tunately nearly all of rails, and can therefore be placed out of consideration in the new laying out of 276 RURAL STUDIES. the farm. An exception is to be noted in regard to the line of enclosure marked upon the diagram, MR, URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 277 which as well as the fences along either side of the high-road are of old mossy boulders, too cumbrous to be removed without great cost. Mistress Urban is in despair at this, as she thinks that the partic- ular fence designated will prevent any breadth to her lawn. In the interests of economy, however, I venture to advise that it be left in its present posi- tion that it be righted where it shows any bulging propensities, and promise that in two or three years at most the greater " part of it shall be screened by irregular groups of shrubbery, and that where its line is discernible, it shall be mantled with such a tangled wealth of Virginia creepers and ivy (the exposure being north) as shall make it worthy its place, and divide admiration with the half dozen of mouse-colored Alderneys feeding beyond. The garden is out of position, besides being upon a soil ill suited to it. Mr. Urban, is moreover urgent for a " great garden ; " he wishes to prepare one in the best manner, and means that his standard pears and dwarf fruits and grapevines shall come in for a share of the benefit. I establish it upon the level plateau of land to the southward of his cattle-yard, giving it the advantage of shelter from the stables, the cold grapery, the compost-shed, the hot-house and the hennery as will appear by consulting the second drawing of 278 RURAL STUDIES. Mr. Urban's fifty acres, after the improvements are matured. IN TILLAGE AND MOWING ^jm ''% MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 279 The cold grapery is marked F ; the hot-house, E^ whose fire, by proper adjustment of one of its flues, gives warmth to the poultry-house, which (marked D) is immediately adjoining. A sheltered spot for hot-bed and compost-heap is provided in a position convenient to the manure deposits of the cattle-yard. A broad walk, at least eight feet in width, traverses the garden, and divides near the southern border, to give place to a picturesque coppice of trees and shrubs, whose interior border is planted with hardy and showy herbaceous flowers; these again are hemmed in every summer-time by a narrower and exterior border of the gayest of " bedding " plants. Behind, and to the southward of the garden paling or hedge is a green lane, serving to connect the pas- ture-land by the high-road, with the cultivated lands to. the westAvard, and with the stable court. This connection may be established, while the west lands are under tillage, by means of a hurdle fence, which shall extend the lane along the west border of the garden. The fields marked Jtfand JR are, as expressed upon the diagram, either in tillage or in meadow ; and the multitude of fences has been done away with. The southernmost of these two fields is laid bare for thorough tillage of any character, and its neighbor to the north has only a protecting belt of wood. 280 RURAL STUDIES. The enclosure -ff", having a ledge and an old group of forest trees in its northwestern angle (offering admirable shelter), may have its picturesquely dis- posed orcharding, or may be planted with ornamental trees, as the proprietor may fancy. In either case, with a few protective hurdles, it may be cropped by a score of Southdowns ; but it must be fairly under- stood that no orcharding will do its best or even its second best, except it be kept under thorough culti- vation, and no grass permitted within reach of its most divergent rootlets. The walks and entrance drive explain themselves. The dotted line H 7", indicates a view of a distant village spire, which upon the first diagram, as will be seen, was entirely cut off by two or three intruding trees ; and even when these were removed, the view was sadly interfered with by the mossy wall already spoken of. To obviate this difficulty I suggested a gap in the wall thereabout, and the establishment of a broad rustic gate under whose rude arch the distant spire would come into sight as through a frame- work. A rough sketch will give a hint of the vista. No pencilling, however, will represent that soft suffusion of smoky color which enwraps the little spire and house-roofs, as they come to the eye through the gap in the sharp dark green of the foreground. MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 281 The view to the northeast (in the direction of the dotted 'line e7"), at the time of taking possession, looked over a foul marsh lying upon the opposite side of the high-road ; this marsh received the drainage of all the elevated ground to the north and west, and its excess of water leaked away by an indecisive and intermittent floAV through the pasture land marked -P. Under the old regime as will be seen by recur- rence to the drawing of the farm at time of purchase this pasture served as " meadow," and produced its annual quota of bog hay. Beyond the marsh and the highlands which skirted it to the northeast, was an extremely pretty view of a range of low moiin- tains, some two miles distant, in the lee of which were to be seen a spire and one or two tall chimneys. But the unkempt, slatternly marsh-land in the fore- ground ruined the scene. It might be planted out indeed ; but an effective planting out would interfere 282 RURAL STUDIES. somewhat with some of the most picturesque objects in the distance. __ I advised a slight excavation of a portion of the marsh so as to show a little lakelet, over whose farther arm a rustic bridge might be thrown the bridge serving as a portion of the bar- rier between the area ofplaisance ground around the pond and the pasture beyond. By this device and adroit disposition of shrubbery, the whole area south of the high-road would appear from the windows of the mansion to constitute but one enclosure, within which the pet Alderneys might be seen cropping the herbage, or cooling themselves in the pool beyond the bridge. Of course such disposition of the matter (which I have tried to illustrate in the drawing) commended itself most warmly to Mrs. Urban and to the Misses Urbans. Nor did the paterfamilias greatly object. To add still more to the picturesqueness of this MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 283 view across the road, I proposed the introduction of the gardener's cottage upon the wayside, in such man- ner that its quaint gable should peep from the trees upon the right of the scene, and a well-trimmed hedge of hemlock shut out all sight of the road- way. The diagram already given will show the position of the water, the walks, the gardener's cottage, and the gardener's patch of vegetables this latter being quite out of sight from the high grounds by the man- sion. It is quite essential to the effectiveness of this design for the lay-out of the grounds that the public road be kept in neat and trim condition so neat and so trim that the visitor approaching it from the south (the direction of the nearest railway station), shall, when he arrives opposite the gardener's cottage (whose porch must jut upon the highway), involun- tarily reckon it a gate-lodge of some private domain into which he just there enters. For the fuller establishment of this pleasant deceit, the real entrance gates should be of the simplest and most unpretend- ing character as if they were but portions of some interior enclosures. Whatever grass or shrubs may grow within the public road after passing the gar- dener's cottage should be as zealously cared for and as trimly kept as if they were within the enclosing Avail. One may be assured that the neighboring 284 RURAL STUDIES. public will never resent such careful keeping of the high-road, and they may be brought by it, in time to practise some such picturesque devices on their own account. Another hint I think it necessary to drop here. The lay-out of a place upon paper it is easy to make very engaging and tasteful ; there is indeed no limit to the graces of curve, which may be laid down by an adroit draftsman upon a fair sheet of Bristol board. But it is a very different matter to establish the same graces upon the land itself. Unlimited expenditure may indeed make any surface conform itself to the curvatures and devices of a drawing. But the art of arts in landscape gardening is to make outlay illustrate the beauties of the land, and not to cramp and deplete the land to illustrate the charms of the drawing. Particular curves or undulations of surface, which may have a most attractive look in a finished land- scape, may lack very many of the esentials of grace if transferred to paper, after the ordinary manner of topographical drawing. If we looked at landscape effects always from a balloon if the hills were all fore-shortened, and the curves of walks or drives all determinable at a glance, a ground map would be a very fair guide by which to determine artistic effects. But the f.tith is that in nature the hills have their MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 285 perspective ; the scattered trees or coppices are not mere woolly blotches, but slant their shadows upon the surface and toss their tops into the sky-line ; curves are not cognizable in their length, or ease, or abruptnesses at a glance we steal upon them by degrees ; they please by their easy cheatery by their unexpected sequence by such abrupt diver- sions, even, as have palpable cause in inequality of surface or obtruding rock or cliff. It is quite pos- sible, indeed nay, it is altogether probable that the curves and devices which are most charmingly effect- ive in the work itself, may have a stiffness and an impertinence upon the map which will thoroughly disappoint. As cases in point, I remember once looking down with exceeding interest from the height of some Italian town (I think in Bologna) upon what seemed a charming garden ; its curves were full of grace ; its little coppices were admirably adjusted ; its flow of w r alks*as happy as a dream ; bxit when I found my way to it afterward, by a bribe to its custodian, and met it upon tame level the bird's-eye view being gone it seemed the baldest of dreary pattern-work in turf with no significance in its curves, and no keeping in its lines. Again, there was a day when I went wandering in sun and shadow through the masses of a Scotch 286 RURAL STUDIES. garden, not fur from Hawthornden, with cliff and brook and water and bridge and tangles of wild- wood all so caught by the landscape designer and so strung along the foot-ways he had planted, that delight was unceasing ; and when I asked for a sketch of its meandering over that broken surface, it presented such an array of tame lines, and meaning- less curvatures and violent crooks as to express nothing of the grace which on the grounds themselves flowed over, and made constant enchantment. A Sunny House. ~T~YT"E will suppose that Mr. Urban is thoroughly * ^ satisfied with his garden and grounds that he finds his newly planted trees growing apace that his Southdowns are all that an accomplished grazier could desire ; but the old house becomes at last a weariness. Not because it is old ; nor yet because it is comparatively small so small that he has to billet, from time to time, a bachelor visitor in a little loft of his tool-house ; but it has no wide and open front- age to the sun. He insists that the new one, of which he projects the building out of the rough material from his cliff, shall have at least a glimpse of southern sunshine in every habitable room below. MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 287 " I am tired of the gloom of north exposures," he writes ; " wood-fires are very well, but the blaze of them is not equal to the blaze of sunshine. Do what you will with the north side, but the parlor must look to the south, and the library (of course) and the din- ing-room, and without going up-stairs there must, if possible, be a billiard-room and a bed-room, looking the same sunny way. In brief, my notion is, to have a house with plenty of room, and no north side to it. Can the problem be solved ? " I don't care for shape, if it be only picturesque, and meet the wants I have named above. A con- siderable slope of the land toward the west upon the locality I have chosen, (keeping all the old charming views in leash) will admit of an airy basement at the western end, and full windows (two of them) to the south. This would furnish a good spot for billiards, if you can contrive a respectable stairway down from the hah 1 ; and if the billiard-room opens out west- wardly into a special conservatory, where one can smoke his cigar to kill the red spiders (or green ones, I forget which), all the better. " What on earth you will do with the north side of the house under this ruling of windows and wants, I don't know. I should say a long picture-gallery, if I had pictures. What if it were to be a blank wall with ivies growing over it ? But then there's 288 RURAL STUDIES. the kitchen and laundry, which the mistress insists must have either western or eastern light if not both. Treat the problem as you will, keeping in mind the coveted exposures the wish to use up some of my raw material in the shape of rocks, and withal, the desire not to make the affair too burden- somely expensive. "P. S. Mrs. Urban wishes a boudoir, which must have a south look-out too, and mind no base- ment kitchen. " P. S. Again. Mrs. U. says the laundry might be in the basement, but not near the billiard- room, and the daiiy must be convenient and cool, and the kitchen must not be too far from the dining-room, and no dumb-waiters ; and it would be very nice to have a veranda for flowers, by the dining-room, and not to forget the sunny bed-room. " She wishes a large hall, and well lighted, and servants' stairs apart, and hopes you'll place the front door in a protected situation ; (south side, if possi- ble.) And a good large China closet and butler's room, very well lighted ; and bath-room convenient, on the first floor." Fortunately a considerable slope of the land to the west admitted of the establishment of laundry and of larder (adjoining) in the basement of the kitchen extension, and also of a roomy billiard-room with MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSK 289 south frontage, und opening westward upon the desired conservatory. Of the floor immediately above, and upon the ground level as one approaches the place from the 13 290 RURAL STUDIES. east, I give a rough draft, showing the general dispo- sition of the rooms. By this it will be seen that every considerable apartment, including even the boudoir, has a southern exposure. I give no drawing of any ground-plan, save that of the first floor, and supplement it only by a rude perspective sketch of the building, in which I have endeavored to incorporate some of the hints already given with respect to the use of homely ma- terials and the intermingling of a timber framework with country masonry. One great advantage of this humble style lies in the fact, that it permits of the attachment of many of the rural offices (as, for instance, the ice-house and Avork-room above, and con- tiguous dairy) to the main building, without offensive contrast, at the same time contributing to the general effect of the mass of building. Mass counts for a great deal in a country house and in landscape ; most of all irregular mass which can be compassed (economy considered) only by associating some of the exterior offices of a rural home with the home itself. All this, the rough material, and the simple method of combining timber framework with a rude filling- in of masonry, permits and invites. Observe that the tall, tower-like building on the right of the view requires no expensive interior fin- ish ; it covers offices which must be provided in MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 291 some form. By attachment to the main structure it gives dignity and extent ; and if it be covered with 292 RURAL STUDIES. graceful, climbing plants, it adds wonderfully to the general effect. The outline and the tints of a country house, as I have already urged, are the great things to be reck- oned, when we rate landscape effects. It is quite pos- sible that the finesse and precision of the city architect will tell no story upon a brook side, or on such slope of land as Mr. Urban has chosen for his site. Effective building of a country house wants a picture-maker as much as architect. First, and chiefest of all, every con- venience must be supplied all sunny exposure made available all juxta-positions reconciled all home- like qualities guarded. Next, the mass of building must tally with the landscape, and illustrate it with a rich, good color of home. Outline must not be monotonous or heavy, but varied and piquant : roofs must gleam a welcome, porches promise hospitality, and chimney-tops, showing pennants of smoke, lift up standing invitations. Conclusion. HAVING thus presented as it were, by turn of kaleidoscope and probably by wearisome re- petition all the shades and outlines of the fifty-acre purchase which my friend Urban has had in mind, I cannot close without a summing up. MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 293 All that I have laid down in way of design, whether for walks, plantations, or country-house, has been intended for suggestion rather than literal ful- filment. Every locality must have its own interpreta- tion at the hands of the artist. Method must vary not only as the hills and the slopes vary, but as the wants and the tastes of the occupant vary. There are farms I know, unctuous with an accu- mulated fertility, and with right lines running athwart their slopes, which might be converted into charming park-lands, with every grass-field rounded into a lawn ; but, to my eye, they would gain nothing, if in this conversion the economic interests of the holder were ignored. Land does its best service where it best feeds our human wants : not necessarily gross wants, but all wants, fine as well as gross. I have endeavored to demonstrate that economic management need not necessarily offend against the rulings of good taste. I feel sure that the highest beauty of landscape will ultimately bring no loss ; and I forecast confidently the time perhaps a cen- tury hence when all the beauties and all the econo- mies and all the humanities will be in leash. Again, a country home will not yield its largest enjoyments to any who adopt it in virtue of a mere whim ; there must be love ; and with love, patience ; and with patience;, trust. This mistress who wears 294 RURAL STUDIES. the golden daffodils in her hair, and the sweet violets at her girdle, and heaps her lap every autumn time with fruit, must be conciliated, and humored, and rewarded, and flattered, and caressed. She resents capricious and fitful attentions like a woman ; re- ceiving them smilingly, and sulking when they are done. I would not counsel any man to think of a home in the country, whose heart does not leap when he sees the first grass-tips lifting in the city court-yards, and the boughs of the Forsythia adrip with their golden censers. Many a man mistakes a certain pleasurable association of his boyish days with the country, for an earnest love ; it may well be only a sentiment which will wilt with the scorching heats of August, and die utterly when the frosts nip the verdure of the year. A man may take his business to the country whether as manufacturer, stock-breeder, tobacco-grow- er and decorate his business with country charms ; but the retired citizen cannot go there, and find en- joyment, except he have an ineradicable love for such charms except he can read lovingly such books as those of Walton, or White of Selborne. I quote, in closing, a verse by that " excellent preacher and angler," Phineas Fletcher ; there is a heavy British mildew on the lines ; and the country- MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 295 man bepraised by the poet would not surely make a very active railway-director ; and yet the mouldy old British portrait will not serve badly as a pendant to these Rural Studies : No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright, No begging wants his middle fortune bite, But sweet content exiles both misery and spite. His certain life, that never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets, and rich content ; The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shade, till noontide's heat be spent : His life is neither tossed in boisterous seas, Or the vexatious world, or lost in slothful ease : Pleased, and full blest he lives, when he his God can please. THE END. IE undersigned have associated themselves for the conduct of Landscape Gardening, and its connected branches of business including Rural Architecture and Engineering, with the Agricultural, Horticultural, and Sanitary treatment of public and private grounds. They will furnish designs for the laying out of Parks, Ceme- teries, Farms, Country Seats, and Village Homesteads. They will also plan modifications of country houses and of old-established gardens or farms, and devise whatever, in their view, may be needful by plantations, thinning of wood, re-adjustment of build- ings or enclosures, drainage, and establishment of walks or drives for the full development of country property, whether the pro- prietor aims at economic management or picturesque effects. Simple suggestions, surveys, drawings, and specifications, for the above objects, with estimates of cost, will each or all be given, as correspondents may wish. They further propose to give attention to the Selection of Sites, whether for Summer Houses, permanent Rural Residences, or Farms. In this connection, they propose to inaugurate a gen- eral bureau of information in regard to country homes to advise respecting the desirableness of particular localities whether on sanitary or economic grounds and to negotiate transfers of coun- try property. Correspondence is invited from those having such property for disposal ; none, however, will be offered by them, un- less previously visited and examined by a member of the firm, in order that an intelligent opinion can be given of its adaptation to the special wants of a client. MR. RICHARD M. HUNT has kindly permitted the association of his name with the firm as advising Architect. DONALD G. MITCHELL, ( O f New Haven.) WILLIAM H. GRANT, Late Superintending Engineer of Central Park. CITY OFFICE, STUDIO BUILDING, 51 West Tenth St., N. Y., where a member of the firm can be consulted on Saturdays, Mon- days, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays ; or MR. MITCHELL may be addressed by mail at New Haven, Ct. ; MR. GRANT at Sing Sing, New York. MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD. BY DONALD G. MITCHELL. 1 vol. lini"., on Laid Tinted Paper. Price, fl 75. A new issue now coming from the prr,st for the Spring Trade. " The cultivation of the scholarly gentleman shows Itself in every page, and a sunny geniality of soul throws a softening tint over the ordinarily unpoetical and angular characteristics of agriculture." Evening Post. " The instruction which it embodies will be none the less valued because of the desultory method which the author has followed, or the many di- gressions into which he has been beguiled. By the great mass of readers, these very features will be considered as an additional charm. The light and easy movement of the author's style, the graceful and delicate transi- tions which he makes, the quiet humor in which he so naturally indulges, the sly but good-natured satire which seems to drop so naturally from his pen, and the unaffected yet chastened pathos into which he rises for a mo- ment, are all exquisitely wrought into a varied and beautiful tissue, which is fitted to give perpetual delight to the cultivated reader, and to be itself an instrument of culture to the unrefined.' 1 New-Englander. " It is a book whose merit can hardly be over-praised. It should be in every farmer's library, as a volume full of practical advice to aid his daily work, and full of ennobling suggestions to lift his calling into a kind of epic dignity." Atlantic Monthly. " Mr. Mitchell has unusual skill in putting his experience, his culture, his taste, his delicate perceptions, into such literary forms as to make them of use to others. This work has the vitality which springs from a love of and acquaintance with nature, and will long be read as one of the best and pleasantest pictures of a New-England farm, and of the charms and drawbacks of our New-England country life." North American Review. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. WET DAYS AT EDGEWOOD, WITH OLD FARMERS, OLD GARDENERS, AND OLD PASTORALS. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1 75. We have no more graceful writer of the English language living than the author of "My Farm "and "Wet Days at Edgewood," nor has the grace of his pen been more apparent in any of his works than in these two bucolics. In the last we have the fruits of his readings and musings among the authors who have written upon rural life and its occupations, philosophers and poets, from Hesiod and Homer down through the ages, to Charles Lamb, and Loudon, the encyclopaedist. A great amount of quaint and pleasing reading is gathered from the thoughts of a hundred writers, and, by the skilful hand of our author, their seeds are cultivated into attractive plants which will beguile many an hour in town or country. The book is divided into nine " wet days," each one of which has its own attractions. The multitude of Ik Marvel's readers will join us in the wish that he may lo"g live to write such pleasant books. Copies sent l/tj jnoil, pnitpaid, on rrcripl of price, by C, S. < Co. DOCTOR JOHNS: BEING A NARRATIVE OF CERTAIN EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF A CONGREGA- TIONAL MINISTER OF CONNECTICUT. By DONALD G. MITCHELL, author of " Reveries of a Bachelor," " My Farm of Edgewood," &c., &o. 2 vols. 12mo. Price, $3 50. " The work affords a rare picture of New England life and manners. It is every Way a charming sketch, and must improve the mind and heart of every one who reads it." Episcopalian. " The book shows the blended powers of the student, the thinker, the poet, and the humorist, and is read as we read Addison or Goldsmith, with tranquil delight." Boston Transcript. " As a piece of rhetoric, it is charming, of course ; for no American writer, since the days of Washington Irving, uses the English language as the 'Ik Marvel' of a few years since, and the 'Farmer of Edge-wood ' of to-day." Round Table. " It is quite evident that, personally, the author has no sympathy with the theological system which 'Dr. Johns' is made to represent, and which is drawn in its hardest and cxtremest form ; but still his sturdy sense of justice makes him to describe him as a really noble character, of which no school of orthodoxy and no church has need to be ashamed, and one which commanded the profoundest respect and lifelong confidence of tho worldly Maverick." Hours at Home. " No book of the author seems to us so good. The great charm of it lies in the truthfulness of its picture of New England life." Nete Haven Palladium. " In one respect Dr. Johns can be spoken of with unalloyed approval ; it is a picture of life and manners that were of a social state that is fast passing away, the mere shadows of which are on the land." Boston Traveller. " The doctor is a kind, unworldly man, and the most interesting person in tho book ; his life has been shadowed and softened by sorrow, and he learns to love the little Adele, though she is a Roman Catholic, and by his love converts her to Protestantism. With his rebellious and warm-heart- ed son he has a sadder experience . the boy, driven from home by his father's apparent, and his hard old aunt's real, harshness, drifts about the world, doing nothing bad, but tossed and worn by religious doubts and love for Adele, till at last he finds rest in perfect reconciliation with his father, the knowledge of A dele's love for him and death." Daily Spy. " He has evidently seen, face to face, much of what he describes. His characters stand out clear, distinct, and life-like, with their several fea- tures of worldly wisdom, shrewd common sense, kindly feeling, exuber- ance of spirits, precise manners, and unfeigned piety. In dealing with these the author is quite at home, and his delineations are at once graceful and truthful" N Y. Evangelist. Copies tent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of pn'cc, by C. S. <6 Co. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below V SEF JUN Form L-9-10m-2,'31 91973