But obviously, superior works in statuary are seldom to be obtained. And the use of imperfect productions, by common uneducated sculptors, would be a measure to be emphatically deprecated among a people, where, as here, Art is in its forming period. Nor do the conditions of our climate give us reason to sigh after Turkish boudoirs, Spanish cascades, and Indian shades. Coolness of atmosphere is not so rare a luxury as to require much attention to jets d'eau, and those other devices on which the orientals, the Italians, and Spaniards expend their first efforts.

Some of the authors of the best opportunities for observation suppose, that the climates and soils, most favorable for the culture of plants and fruits, are those where the least care and taste are actually displayed. If this be so, it only furnishes grounds for mortification. Abused privileges are worse than natural disadvantages. The general facilities of air, earth, and water we certainly share in common and equally with others in the same wide latitudes. With such broad territory and diversified soils it is difficult to believe, that this country may not, by due perseverance, yet rival the various departments of floricul ture in the old world the tulips of Holland and Spitalfields, the carnations of Norwich, the roses of Pæstum, the combined excellencies of Lancashire, all the pinks of Paisley and Glasgow, and even the hyacinths of the East. Nearly the same thing may be asserted with regard to shade-trees. We make no boasts of the future. We only urge our obligations to exertion. In New England it is a favorable circumstance, that picturesque beauty may be made a primal object, while in the Southern States, as in Southern Europe, the qualities most sought must be coolness and repose. A greenness of turf, too, is obtainable at the North, which the intensity of the heat renders almost impossible under the tropics. It often quickens the activity of the favored to observe the conquests of the unfortunate over difficulty. The newspapers tell us that at the Rock of Rabaçal, in the island of Madeira, the Portuguese have lately cut an aqueduct along the face of the perpendicular stone precipice, eight hundred feet from its base and two hundred feet from the top, to arrest the cascade in its tremendous plunge, and convey it a long distance to irrigate their districts. Besides, other countries, like Italy, are obliged to depend much in these matters on the favor of silly princes and an ignorant nobility.

Here, no patronage is waited for but individual competence; no reward is asked but the public approval. When there shall be no deficiency in the private gardens of laborers and men of leisure, metropolitan and commercial horticulture will soon take its proper rank.

Abundant encouragement to those, whose progress has yet but begun, may be gathered from the history of horticultural pursuits wherever they have been undertaken with spirit. Once commenced, they generally grow in the public favor with rapidity. Ignorance of their whole nature, of the availableness of old necessary means, with the indifference that prevails of course where actual experiments are hardly commenced, — these are the most common and most efficient foes of the art. In the year 1760 there were not more than six nurseries in Scotland, occupying about sixty or seventy acres. In 1812 one mercantile house shipped for foreign ports more than two millions of seedlings. In the vicinity of London, according to an estimate made a few years since, within ten miles' circuit there are thirteen hundred acres of land devoted to shrubbery and flowers, and twice as many to productions for the table. The first public botanical garden in Europe was commenced by Cosmo De Medici in Pisa, in the year 1543, and in 1591 the number of new plants was so great that a second enclosure was laid out to contain them. Among ourselves, indeed, within a very short period, roses have increased from a very limited number of species to more than five hundred.

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We have all along spoken of Gardening and Rural Architecture, without distinguishing very definitely in our remarks between them, because we have wished to allude to some principles that govern the progress and the details of both. nations approach to elegance, it is said, men learn to build stately sooner than to garden finely, and thence it has been inferred that gardening is the more difficult art. The real cause for the fact, so far as the fact exists, is, undoubtedly, that Gardening requires a more fixed, tranquil state of society, less engrossing occupation with political transactions. All civilized nations regard their edifices as immediately connected with their national glory. The most artificial, therefore, with ambition for a prompter, excel there. It certainly is not singular, that an honorable pride should enter into the feeling with which each householder regards his own mansion, the retreat where the happiest and often

the best portions of his life are passed, the scene of his reflections, his love and his hospitality, his own private realm. The only wonder is that without any additional advantage, or any diminution of expense, violations of good keeping should be as frequent as they are. There may be, no doubt, excellent reasons drawn from some one of the three cardinal rules of the old authors "Commoditie, Firmness, and Delight" - for selecting, as a site, a dyke in the middle of a marsh, rather than a green elevation by the side of a leaping water-fall; for divesting of its metaphorical meaning the strong trope of the Florentine Architect, when he described certain structures placed "standing pools of air," by more than realizing the image of building in standing pools of water. As to "Commoditie," such a choice would clearly obviate the inconvenience of a laborious ascent in the approach; and in favor of "Firmness," it could safely be argued, that there would be comparatively slight danger of sudden demolition from those frightful gales, which upon eminences are confessedly possible. But in the third essential, we are afraid we shall be at fault in making out so plausible a case. Strenuous advocates may enter the abused plea of "De gustibus." Equally probable is it, that a defence may be found for those extravagant inventions" without any authenticke paterne" wherein disproportion and fillagree predominate; structures, large or small, made up of half a dozen shapeless blocks, of different ages, huddled shapelessly together, barely fortified with dropsical pillars, and argus-eyed, for the multitude of their windows. This habit of building houses at successive decades, story by story, and wing by wing, as an enlarging business furnishes the enstalments, and an enlarging family the necessity, conduces much more to keeping alive the spirit of private enterprise, than of rural elegance. Were it not better to be content in the merest cot, be it never so rustic, till fortune should vouchsafe a more sure earnest of her favor, and then to erect something a little permanent and satisfying. Sometimes, owing to a freak of that benefactress, or to a destruction of the proper ratio between the increase of dividends and the increase of descendents, these super and circum-additions exhibit an unhappy curtailment of splendor; so that these strange conglomerations remind one of the objects presented to the eye of an oriental traveller, where the halfbarbarous inhabitants have built, against the remains of the magnificent piles of antiquity, squalid hovels of mud. There

is one custom prevalent in New England villages, though it is by no means confined to New England nor to this continent, for which we have never been able to account to ourselves satisfactorily; and we dare say others have passed through exercises of ingenuity similar to our own, to as little purpose. In the broad and blessed country, where the open fields stretch away unbroken for miles, from street to street, the builders of habitations, that are to be their own homes and their children's homes, crowd those habitations into such remarkable proximity to the beaten highway, that there shall be no grass-blade, bush, hedge, or window, but it shall be amply replenished, and daily, with dust or mud; and that the voices of vociferating and the glances of impertinent passers-by shall also find their way within the precincts of the domestic fireside.

To the question of practicability, so naturally suggested by the discussion of subjects like this, we believe we are not inattentive. We do not expect all the farmers, mechanics, and tradesmen among us to be made capable of appreciating or following the higher rules of architecture, or the other beautiful arts. But we do claim for all of them a capacity to detect falsities and to improve defects, a faculty altogether more accurate and more improvable, than seems generally to be supposed. We have full faith that moments otherwise wasted, if given to observation of natural forms, reflection on their imitable beauties, and acquaintance with the simpler principles of artistical labor, might work a change in the external aspect of our rural districts, that would compensate for much greater endeavors. Masters must first come; they will come when there shall be a preparation for them, and a voice calling them. First the soul's importunate craving after that which the beautiful only can minister, then, its sure satisfaction. Titian, Raphael, and Corregio were not the only students in their three cities. Not only studios but streets held throngs of living, admiring, enthusiastic disciples. The multitude who bore in their breasts the feeling that gave those mighty ones birth passed away. They, the few, were not born to die. Genius does not offer her lifelike creations to the world, till there is a great universal mind that may be quickened and inspired. It is but a sorry apology for a people to offer for its want of taste that it has no artists. It is said that the change for which we plead is one which cannot be effected without imprudent pecuniary outlays, — outlays inconsistent with the conditions of that large body of the peo

ple for whom we write. Before this objection is pressed, we respectfully solicit a thorough and candid consideration of the nature of the arts under discussion, in their practical details, and a just comparison of the expenditures they involve, with those actually made in the temporary expedients, the tinselled embellishments, and the awkward attempts that now stand in our way. Whatever would be wanting on our side of the account we would supply by the curtailment of hollow, fashionable customs, foolish indulgences, idle dissipations. Besides, we confess, we do not feel much sympathy with the spirit of the demurrer. The lurking eye for the main chance is under it. Our progress in art reminds one of the practice of the Illyrian minstrels, who, when they have sung half their ballad, stop short, take off their hats, and insist on the collection, without trusting to the accidental liberality of the charmed listeners. The establishment of a gallery of paintings is proposed as a public enterprise, in a commercial metropolis. The first question agitated is whether the proposed undertaking will thicken the crowd that visits the marts of business, whether it will heighten the mercantile prospects of that city and pour wealth into its avenues. And on the answer that shall be given, will it depend whether or not the project shall be suffered to glide fairly out of the public mind, and ever after be carefully precluded from the public notice. Without doubt the statement is too unqualified to apply to any city among us. But it represents a great evil in our social tendencies, the same which Dewey evidently has in his view when he declares, he "would rather that one silent, calm picture of martyr-like heroism sunk into the public heart, than to know of some agitating speculation which had put a million of gold into the public coffer."

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The cultivation of a purer taste in the Fine Arts has a connection more intimate, than any yet alluded to, with religious feeling. Without conceding anything to mere sentimentalism, we assume that there are certain associations in the minds of the people with their sanctuaries of worship, that are salutary aids to virtue. It is not probable that in this age these associations will become so fixed or so engrossing, as to endanger either the progress or the spirituality of our religion. We are in little peril of repeating the errors of the the time of Guercino, and making our Christian art again sacerdotal and dogmatical. The foolish extravagancies of the Catholic mystical schools need be feared no longer. It was natural that at the first as