Emerson speaks twice of the Jew in his essay on Fate, in terms precisely
similar to those we commonly hear to-day: "We see how much will has been
expended to extinguish the Jew, in vain.... The sufferance which is the
badge of the Jew has made him in these days the ruler of the rulers of
the earth." Those keen observations were made certainly more than forty
years ago, and probably more than fifty.
Landscape architecture is not yet an established profession among us, in
spite of the achievements of Downing, Cleveland, and Olmsted and their
disciples; yet much has been accomplished within the last twenty-five
years to realize the predictions on this subject made by Emerson in his
lecture on The Young American. He pointed out in that lecture that the
beautiful gardens of Europe are unknown among us, but might be easily
imitated here, and said that the landscape art "is the Fine Art which is
left for us.... The whole force of all arts goes to facilitate the
decoration of lands and dwellings.... I look on such improvement as
directly tending to endear the land to the inhabitant." The following
sentence might have been written yesterday, so consistent is it with the
thought of to-day: "Whatever events in progress shall go to disgust men
with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life and
country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this
continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of
real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the
landscape.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66