The Boundary Line between Borticulture and Agriculture. 66 HAT!" exclaim our readers, "a division between the two primal occupations of man, born of one parent, educated in the same school, with one common purpose, one destiny?" Certainly. By common acceptance, gardening and farming are as far asunder as the poles-the zenith and the nadir. And for the simple reason only, that people, in their ignorance, or prejudice, choose to make them so. There has existed, and still exists, in the minds of a great multitude of people, an ideal and insurmountable wall between these twin professions, and which must continue to separate them so long as ignorance and prejudice, instead of light and intelligence, control. It has been one chief aim of "THE HORTICULTURIST" to familiarize the arts of horticulture, planting, building, and the subordinate occupations attending them, to the attention and understanding of everybody who has at all to do with the cultivation of ground; to carry them into every household, and homestead, and into every farmery in the land-provided their occupants would take and read our paper, and profit by the instruction it contains. Let us examine: The stalwart, plodding, straitforward farmer, unfamiliar with our pages, looking merely at our title and vignette, imagines it to smell of rose-water and perfume; stitched in a dainty cover and talking some sort of sublimated nonsense, to people who have more money to spend than they know what to do with, and therefore employ it in the erection of all sorts of fanciful buildings for all imaginable and useless purposes; to stock their gardens with all varieties of new and worthless plants, vegetables, and fruits; to plant their open grounds with foreign trees and shrubs, which nobody knows an English name for-in short, to promote the practice and cultivation of things beyond the reach of the ordinary farmer, and useless to either his legitimate occupation or enjoyment. Now, no honest man ever made a greater mistake. The difference between the two arts of Agriculture and Horticulture, farming and gardening, to employ the Nov. 1, 1852. No. XI. 490 BOUNDARY BETWEEN HORTICULTURE AND AGRICULTURE. more familiar terms, is not greater than between "low" farming and "high" farming, as Mr. Mechi, the famous English farmer of "Tiptree Heath," would denominate them. One, the "old-fashioned," slow and easy mode of our fathers; the other, a thorough cultivation and manuring of the soil, stimulating it to the utmost power of production, and consequent profit-the only successful mode of farming in a country with a crowded population and a heavy consumption. "High" farming is, in fact, horticultural cultivation applied to agriculture. There is no wall between these two practices. It is the gradual and agreeable approach from the rough inequalities of surface, in the broken, waste field, to the smooth and grassy turf of the luxuriant meadow. ces. Every farmer, who is a farmer, has his garden of a quarter of an acre and upwards. From this spot he obtains two to five times the amount of consumable vegetables and fruits that any other equal quantity of cultivated land on his farm produHe knows it too, yet never asks himself the question whether to extend that garden into area of five or ten acres, and put it into choice fruits and fine market vegetables, would not give him a greater profit than to keep the same surface in corn, oats, or pasture, as before, and to do so would require no more skill than his own brain can readily acquire, and his own ingenuity can look after, if he will only take the pains to get a little information. Here, and here only, is the WALL between Agriculture and Horticulture-the indisposition to read, examine, and practice for one's self. Plain talk, we admit; but it is also a plain subject to all who choose to understand it. We have a desire that every American farmer should become, to a degree, a horticulturist-sufficiently so to supply his household from his own farm, with the choicest vegetables and fruits; by the proper disposition and cultivation of trees and shrubbery, and flowering plants, to create a taste and attachment in his family for all rural things, which must add infinitely to their pleasure and their enjoyment, and aid them to reach that destiny which God in his bounty intends for all whom he has placed beneath the sunshine of heaven, and on this favored side of his foot-stool. The study of Horticulture, in what study it requires, is simply an episode in kind of the grand art of Agriculture itself, requiring no extraordinary teaching, but only carrying out and extending, like algebra beyond arithmetic, the nice and more intricate details of the subject. The pursuit of Horticulture requires only thought and attention-not intense at all— but steady and consistent thought, coupled with close application. Every farmer may thus become a Horticulturist sufficient for his own wants, the requirements of his own family, and immediate profit to his estate, if markets, and the conveniences of getting to them, favor him. Our subjects are all intended to be practical, each in their kind; to embrace the wants, the taste, and the fancy of all, from him who "trucks" the product of his own cabbage garden at the nearest market, to the man who erects his conservatories by the thousand feet in extent. Each, all, and every one may find instruction suited to his wants, and by the aid of his own contributions of thought and experience to our pages, he may also edify others in the same laudable pursuit with himself. Indeed, no system of farming can be complete unless a department of horticulture be connected with the farm. The aid of horticulture is required to give the homestead a character of truth and completeness. A farm may be productive; it may be well and thoroughly cultivated; it may, in well arranged buildings and other sheltered accommodation, give protection to all that live upon it and share in its labors or aid in its emoluments; but the repose, the quietude, the true enjoyment of agricultural life, cannot be had short of an appropriation to the horticultural department. That it is, which more than all else beside, gives expression to the domain, and stamps it with a character of dignity and beauty, and clusters those thousand associations around it, which fill up to perfection the true, as well as the ideal picture of Home. COL. WILDER'S EULOGY ON MR. DOWNING. THE annual return of the 28th of July will moisten the eyes and agonize the hearts of many American citizens. On the morning of that disastrous day two steamers, the Armenia and the Henry Clay, with numerous passengers on board, start from the capital for the chief commercial port of the Empire State. Like "stately sailing swans," they glide swiftly over the smooth surface of the Hudson. The fire within them waxes warm; their awful energies are roused; they run abreast-anon, the "bird of the West” darts ahead and distances her orient rival. She calls at her landings, swells the number of her passengers, and with fearful velocity bears them onward. They admire the varied landscapes, the cottages, villas, towns, cities, bold cliffs, and lofty mountains, which have given the scenery about this majestic river a world-wide renown. They near a city, which rises in beauty and grace from its western bank back to the brow of the distant hill. There is a "Cottage, half embowered With modest jessamine, and there a spot Of garden ground, where, ranged in neat array, Its architecture is in the most approved Elizabethean style. Its grounds are tastefully laid out and adorned, and he who named it "Highland Gardens," accurately translated the natural language of the place. It overlooks the city and the river, and commands a view of one of the most extensive and beautiful landscapes in the world. The very site seems designed by nature for the birth place of genius, and for the abode of comfort, taste and learning. Its proprietor, with his relatives and friends, six in all, take passage in the ill-fated boat. She bears them on toward their port of destination, when suddenly the alarm of fire rings like a death-knell through that floating sepulchre. The passengers are ordered aft, and she is headed for the eastern shore. In a moment all is consternation and horror, which no language can describe, no painter's pencil sketch. Her whole centre is on fire. She strikes the bank two miles below the town of Yonkers. The wind envelopes the multitude on her stern, in smoke and flame. With a fearful odds in the chances of escape, * Pronounced before the Pomological Congress at Philadelphia, September 13, 1852. the Great Destroyer offers them their choice between a death by flame, or a death by flood. Alas! on some he inflicts both; they are first burned and then drowned! They are driven before the devouring element, and entrust themselves to the mercy of the waves. Admidst the crowd at the stern, stands a man of tall and slender habit, and of thoughtful expression, whose penetrating eye surveys this perilous scene, and secks the most favorable chance of escape. His accustomed self-possession fails him not in this awful extremity. He imparts wise counsels for personal preservation to his friends and those about him; then climbs to the upper deck for articles from the furniture of the boat, on which they may float to the shore. He returns, but his beloved wife and part of his company have already been driven overboard. He commits the rest, and last of all himself, also to the fatal flood, "Forlorn of heart, and by severe decree Compelled reluctant to the faithless sea." They sink; they rise. With the grasp of death they cling to him and again submerge him and themselves in the waves. He brings them once more to the surface and beats for the shore. Alas! it is in vain; his efforts to save others peril his own life. Entangled, exhausted, and disabled, he sinks to a watery grave. But the partner of his life, her sister and brother, who were mercifully rescued from the jaws of death, are still unapprised of his melancholy fate, and search for him in vain among the agonized survivors. But the cry, she sinks! she sinks!! fills their hearts with direful apprehensions. Still they cling to the delusive hope that he may be among those rescued by the rival Armenia and borne to the city of New-York. The object of his conjugal love returns to her desolate home. The tidings of this awful disaster fly upon the wings of the wind; the mystic wires tremble at the shock; the press utters its loud lament; the note of woe rings through our streets, fills our dwellings and convulses our hearts with grief. The nation mourns, minute guns are fired upon the spot to arouse the inhabitants of the surrounding country, and to start the dead from their lowly rest. Multitudes rush from every quarter to the mournful scene; they crowd around each body as it is raised and brought to the shore, to identify therein a relation or friend. Among them his brother and partner in business arrive. At length another body is raised. Its countenance is familiar; it is recognised; and at last the melancholy announcement is made that ANDREW JACKSON DOWNING is no more. "Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay.” His precious remains are borne back to their native city and to his house of mourning. There they meet his widowed wife, whose ear, during the fourteen years of their wedded life, had been so quick to catch the sound of his returning footsteps, and who had been the first to greet and welcome him. Alas! she is suddenly bereft by one fatal blow, of friend, mother, husband! The funeral rites are performed; his body is committed to the tomb, "earth to earth," "ashes to ashes," "dust to dust!" Thus terminated the earthly career of our lamented brother and associate. But his name shall be perpetuated by fragrant flowers and delicious fruits; by gushing fountains and murmuring streams; by grateful shade and balmy breeze, and by many a rural scene, and many a tasteful home. He shall be remembered "Where cottages and fanes, and villas rise; Where cultur'd fields and gardens smile around." But to be more specific, the results of his toil appear in the forests which he has preserved from the merciless axe-in the trees which he has described and made to contribute more abundantly to the taste and comfort of their proprietors-in the avenues which he w has adorned-in the lawns and pleasure grounds which he has laid out and appropriately embellished-and in numberless buildings which stand as monuments to his architectural skill. The fruits of his labor are also gathered in thousands of gardens and conservatories. The numerous cottages and villas which have lately sprung up in the towns and villages about our commercial cities, and throughout our happy, land, evince his genius; and it is due to his worth to say that few have left a mark so deep and broad on the generation in which they lived. In responding to the calls which have been made upon me to pronounce the eulogy of our deceased friend, I shall attempt nothing more, and certainly can do nothing better, than to articulate the language of his useful life, and to give free utterance to your own convictions of his worth. Mr. DOWNING was born in Newburgh, N. Y., on the 31st day of October, A. D., 1815. In his boyhood he manifested a fondness for botany, mineralogy, and other natural sciences, which at the age of sixteen, when he left school, he was able to prosecute without the aid of an instructor. At that period, his father having died when he was but seven years of age, his mother desired him to become a clerk in a dry goods store; but he, following the native tendencies of his mind, preferred to remain with his elder brother in the nursery and garden, whose accuracy and practical skill in horticulture gave special prominence to the same traits in the deceased, and with whom he might study the theory, and perfect himself in the practice of his favorite art. In the formation of his character, we also recognize with gratitude the agency of Baron de Liderer, the Austrian Consul, whose summer residence was in his native place, a gentleman of large endowments and attainments, of eminent purity of mind, and refinement of manners, a mineralogist and botanist, who discoved in young Downing a mind of kindred taste, who made him the frequent inmate of his family, as well as his own companion in numerous excursions for the scientific exploration of the surrounding country. But his sensibility to artistic beauty was cultivated and developed by the lamented Raphael Hoyle, an English artist, residing in Newburgh, and who, like himself, went down to an early grave, leaving behind him specimens in landscape painting, true to nature, and of remarkable delicacy of coloring.. His manners were much improved and adorned by his familiar intercourse with his neighbor, Mr. Edward Armstrong, a gentlemen of refinement and wealth, at whose fine country seat on the Hudson he was introduced to the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, an Englishman whose book of Travels in America has been admired on both sides of the Atlantic. There he also made the acquaintance of many other distinguished men, who subsequently became his correspendents and personal friends. These associations had, no doubt, much influence in strengthening his refined and generous nature. He devoted all the time which he could reclaim from physical labor to reading and study. In the bowers of his garden he held frequent converse with the muses, who inspired him with the poetic fire which illumes his pages, and imparts peculiar vivacity and energy to his style. At the age of twenty-two, on the seventh of June, 1838, he married Miss Caroline Elizabeth, daughter of J. P. De Wint, Esq., of Fishkill Landing, a lady of congenial spirit, of refinement and intelligence, to whom the world is much indebted for his usefulness. In grateful return for her valuable services, she now enjoys the commiseration and condolence of his friends in America and transatlantic countries. But with all these aids, still Mr. Downing was, in the strictest sense, self-taught; a fact which deserves to be recorded, not only to his praise, but as an encouragement to thousands of aspiring youth. If he |