may furnish from its shadowy regions. We only ask candor and patience. We beg our critics, both new-fledged, and unfledged, to drive not with "laxas habenas.' The better part of courage is prudence. And it is as true of criticism as of anything else.

R. P. S.

ART. III. -Hovey's Monthly Magazine of Horticulture. Boston. New York.

OUR subject is the Popular Taste in Gardening, and in Rural and Church Architecture. It is not our purpose to trace the progress that has been made in American art, to describe its present condition, or to account for whatever deficiencies and positive faults may be actually discoverable in our artists and their works. Without venturing on a field so wide, we would only endeavor to make apparent some reasons for a more general application of the principles of good taste to those arts, which sustain an intimate relation with rural contentment and pleasure, and religious worship; principles which all may gather from the world of nature, and which the easiest exercise of the creative faculty will transfer to the kingdom of Art. It is as difficult to see why a subject so practical in its bearings should be excluded from the circle of popular inquiries, as to learn why men should suppress, or imprison within themselves, those common sentiments of admiration for all beautiful things, which need only to be exercised, that they may be valued as among their best possessions.

Surely, the imperfect appreciation of natural scenery, hitherto exhibited by our population, is not singular. The stronghearted men, who first appropriated the untouched territory, were not wandering, like Arcadian lovers, in search of valleys and plains filled with the presence of Beauty, and overhung by an atmosphere, all dreaminess and repose. Even the majesty that rose before them hardly kindled a thought, that could compare in sublimity with the great thought of Freedom and Right that possessed their souls. And so soon as the emergency in which that thought conquered had moved by,

the hard pressure of imperative wants was upon them, and they stood stricken with poverty in the midst of boundless resources of wealth. What wonder, then, that the nation, in grasping at treasures that no enterprise or competition seemed able to exhaust, should heedlessly mar the casket whence they were torn? Could the country's first laying out have been executed by men of leisure and education, with a deliberate reference to future times, so many steps had not been taken, that have now to be retraced. The accession of hungry roamers from old and crowded capitals has driven on the earlier inheritors in the strife for advantages, and the dust of the contest has not yet subsided nor its heat cooled. We have come, inevitably, to present the unusual spectacle of a vigorous people, passing at once beyond its infancy, without those materials for poetry which are found in a protracted and romantic childhood, seeking a ground-work for its fictions, not in the fables of any mythical period of its own, but in a race whose superstitions it has always understood, and which it has vanquished by its civilization and its arms. Gradually, however, as the years have increased, nature in her simplicity has begun to reveal herself to watchful eyes, and the voices she has whispered have given promises of a better future. As one encroachment after another is made by the eager spirit of self-aggrandizement on her beautiful domains, we look for a substitute in the reproductive power of art; a power that shall preserve imperishable images of the vanishing forms, perpetuate at least the echo of the broken harmony, and permit us to catch glimpses, in later days, of those fresh, wild scenes, over which enterprise is driving her ruthless ploughshare.

But then it will be asked, if this spirit of enterprise is not a worthier guest than the spirit of art, judging of the latter by the social condition in ages when it has been most alive. Is not the Hoosier, that breaks his iron implements against every root in his clearings, doing more for the world than the smoothtongued Lazzaroni that saunter along the streets of the splendid cities of Italy, and perhaps lounge the year away on the very pavements and among the columns of St. Peter's? Certainly we would not forfeit all the progress that has been made in useful science, much less what has here been effected exclusively in advancing the principles of civil order, popular industry, right government, and religious truth. Such a dilem

ma as that just suggested, and so often suggested, is not a natural nor an actual one. The more reasonable question, one that needs only to be presented, to be decided, is this. Were it not well for us, could we, learning the imperfections of past ages and other nations, incorporate among our happier institutions their schools of art, their reverence for the soul's true creations, could we transport into the midst of the pomp and pageantry of American scenery their Protogenes, their Coreggio, their Claude Lorraine, and Salvator Rosa?

Within a few years, something like a general movement in travelling, and a general admiration of fine sights has been observable. The superabundant wealth of nervous citizens retired from business is sometimes transferred to the pockets of rail-road contractors, hotel-keepers, and stage-proprietors. So far as this indicates a dissatisfaction with the artificial modes of thinking and feeling, that a perpetual town life is apt to induce, it is a thing to be welcomed and encouraged. Indeed, as the centralization of the community goes on, as manufacturing and commercial affairs assume a more prominent rank, in comparison with the interests of agriculture and the enjoyments of retired study, this must be one of the principal means of continuing the acquaintance between men and nature. A century ago, cultivated and refined minds were open to the influences that must come to them, in their serious occupations, from a land with a surface like our own. It is more recently that the sources of new freshness to the feelings have come to be considered rather as novelties that repay for the seeking; secrets which it argues much merit to discover, and no little insight to discourse upon in the capacity of virtuoso. Now, the facts themselves, the real indications of a growing disposition for travel, for exchanging confinement for freedom, walled streets for the green hill-side, a smoky air for the deep blue with which God encircles the mountains, these are never to be checked, but always to be accounted signs of good. Freedom from all that is affected and artificial is one of the best results of such a change, as well as a liberal conviction, that the world contains much besides and beyond self. The practical has its place, we had almost said it has its place everywhere. We claim room for it here, in the study of beauty, the study of art. Whatever has to do with man's deepest interests, his moral being, his rational satisfactions, the purity of his heart, and the quickening of his generous affections, that in the high

est sense is practical. And, in the individual mind, the more ready the perception of all beauty, the richer are the sources of innocent pleasure, the more enlarged the capacity for spiritual culture. There is no loss of manliness in that man's nature, who sometimes so far forgets the lessons of worldly wisdom, that he follows on the free way of a mountain stream, simply because he cannot turn back from its gracefulness and its music, and who feels that no secondary end needs be sought, when the influences of the hour have sunk into his soul. What can

be conceived more pitiable and disgusting, than to see renewed among our countrymen the character of those Tuscan noblemen, who go in such numbers from city to country, not to be filled with the purifying pleasures of rural retirement, but to lavish, in a few weeks of shooting and dissipation, what for the rest of the year they have been saving with niggardliness and exaction.

worn

It were equally well for those who never take the blessing when they may, and for those whose habitual possession of it render them insensible to its value, could they fully appreciate the possible power of these influences from the world without, over certain moods of mind To those who are wearied, down by the exhausting collisions and details of business, they are almost like the ministrations of religion itself. The head, sick with the clamor of noisy places, is laid on some grassy slope, and the dews are healing. The hill's light breath that takes to itself balminess and virtue from every tree and shrub, from the walnut-leaf that has such sweet strength in its juices, and the little herb on which each dewdrop turns to perfume, sheds its mingled richness everywhere. Then, the glistening water, the rose, the moss, and above all the sky and cloud, awaken that peculiar half-consciousness of the presence of scenes and voices, thoughts and raptures, that have been with us before, we cannot tell when or where. The careless carol of a bird, if the ear is not too much hardened, will make worldliness and pride, old hatreds and slumbering purposes of evil, to seem what they really are, loathsome invaders of the soul's peace. It is true, the slaves of a necessary custom learn to love, at last, the bricks and tiles that are familiar to their sight, and wish no change. So did that child of unutterable afflictions, Oliver Twist, burst into an agony of grief, when he lost sight of the wretched home where no kind word or look had ever lighted the gloom of his infancy. But

this only shows with what tenacity local feelings will take hold on even the meanest objects, and teaches us, while we pity those burdened victims of want, and admire the wisdom that gives them contentment with their lot, to lament that, noble as those feelings are, they have not found a nobler exercise.

We advert thus particularly to travel, and to the change that comes over the feelings from even a temporary dwelling where all is simple and native, because necessity excludes a large portion of the community from the possibility of introducing rural objects among their ordinary residences. And if regard be had solely to those whose fortunes and leisure enable them to seek retirement and recreation wherever these may be found, the country, in order to be attractive, must either remain in that simplicity where neither a dry utility has despoiled nature of its original charms, nor false taste has loaded it with those which are gaudy and coarse, or else it must have the true improvement and correct ornamenting of art. The former condition cannot long remain. In attaining the latter lies almost our only hope. Besides, in the growth of the arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Music, the first and most perfect works and performers will for a long time be gathered almost exclusively in those capitals, that are the centres at once of commer cial and intellectual activity. In this way the enthusiasm, with which the public seek and study the collections, becomes some tolerable measure of the public interest. In order that these arts may exert their full power as a source of public instruction, they must be exercised in obedience to the public voice. Their results must be on a scale which only Institutions, national or state Academies, can reach. Those results will be attained only by the employment of resources which such associations can command. At present, however, for reasons obvious and often stated, we cannot look for galleries like those filled by slow accessions in the cities of the Old World. We cannot point to erections in Architecture like those of France, Italy, Germany, and England; nor to public gardens like those of Regent's Park, Carlsruhe, the Hague, Kensington, the Tuilleries, and the Luxembourg. But there is much to be done by various methods and in other fields; and it is here that we are now looking for the materials of a change.

It has always seemed to us a singular inconsistency, that those persons, who exhibit the most enthusiastic fondness for visiting places remarkable for natural beauty or the achieve