IN

Gitizens Retiring to the Country.

IN a former volume we offered a few words to our readers on the subject of choosing a country seat. As the subject was only slightly touched upon, we propose to say something more regarding it now.

There are few or no magnificent country seats in America, if we take as a standard such residences as Chatsworth, Woburn, Blenheim, and other well known English places with parks a dozen miles round, and palaces in their midst larger than our largest public buildings. But any one who notices in the suburbs of our towns and cities, and on the borders of our great rivers and railroads, in the older parts of the Union, the rapidity with which cottages and villa residences are increasing, each one of which costs from three, to thirty or forty thon and dollars, will find that the aggregate amount of money expended in American rural homes, for the last ten years, is perhaps, larger than has been spent in any part of the world. Our Anglo-Saxon nature leads our successful business men always to look forward to a home out of the city; and the ease with which freehold property may be obtained here, offers every encouragement to the growth of the natural instinct for landed proprietorship.

This large class of citizens turning country-folk, which every season's revolution is increasing, which every successful business year greatly augments, and every fortune made in California helps to swell in number, is one which, perhaps, spends its means more freely, and with more of the feeling of getting its full value, than any other class.

But do they get its full value? Are there not many who are disgusted with the country after a few years' trial, mainly because they find country places, and country life, as they have tried them, more expensive than a residence in town? And is there not something that may be done to warn the new beginners of the dangers of the voyage of pleasure on which they are about to embark, with the fullest faith that it is all smooth water?

FEB. 1, 1852.

No. II.

We think so and as we are daily brought into contact with precisely this class of citizens, seeking for and building country places, we should be glad to be able to offer some useful hints to those who are not too wise to find them of value.

Perhaps the foundation of all the miscalculations that arise, as to expenditure in forming a country residence, is, that citizens are in the habit of thinking everything in the country cheap. Land in the town is sold by the foot, in the country by the acre. The price of a good house in town is, perhaps, three times the cost of one of the best farms in the country. The town buys everything: the country raises every. thing. To live on your own estate, be it one acre or a thousand, to have your own milk, butter and eggs, to raise your own chickens and gather your own strawberries, with nature to keep the account instead of your grocer and market woman, that is something like a rational life; and more than rational, it must be cheap. So argues the citizen about retiring, not only to enjoy his otium cum dignitate, but to make a thousand dollars of his income, produce him more of the comforts of life than two thousand did before.

Well; he goes into the country. He buys a farm, (run down with poor tenants and bad tillage.) He builds a new house, with his own ignorance instead of architect and master builder, and is cheated roundly by those who take advantage of this masterly ignorance in the matter of bricks and mortar; or he repairs an old house at the full cost of a new one, and has an unsatisfactory dwelling forever afterwards. He undertakes high farming, and knowing nothing of the practical economy of husbandry, every bushel of corn that he raises costs him the price of a bushel and a half in the market. Used in town to a neat and orderly condition of his premises, he is disgusted with old tottering fences, half drained fields and worn-out pastures, and employs all the laboring force of the neighborhood to put his grounds in good order.

Now there is no objection to all this for its own sake. On the contrary good buildings, good fences, and rich pasture fields are what especially delight us in the country. What then is the reason that, as the country place gets to wear a smiling aspect, its citizen owner begins to look serious and unhappy! Why is it that country life does not satisfy and content him? Is the country, which all poets and philosophers have celebrated as the Arcadia of this world, is the country treacherous? Is nature a cheat, and do seed-time and harvest conspire against the peace of mind of the retired citizen?

Alas! It is a matter of money. Everything seems to be a matter of money nowa-days. The country life of the old world, of the poets and romancers, is cheap. The country life of our republic is dear. It is for the good of the many that labor should be high, and it is high labor that makes country life heavy and oppressive to such men-only because it shows a balance, increasing year after year, on the wrong side of the ledger. Here is the source of all the trouble and dissatisfaction in what may be called the country life of gentlemen amateurs, or citizens, in this country-" it don't pay." Land is cheap, nature is beautiful, the country is healthy, and all these conspire to draw our well-to-do citizen into the country. But labor is dear, experience is dearer, and a series of experiments in unprofitable crops the dearest of all; and our

citizen friend, himself, as we have said, is in the situation of a man who has set out on a delightful voyage, on a smooth sea, and with a cheerful ship's company; but who discovers, also, that the ship has sprung a leak-not large enough to make it necessary to call all hands to the pump--not large enough perhaps to attract anybody's attention but his own, but quite large enough to make it certain that he must leave her or be swamped-and quite large enough to make his voyage a serious piece of business. Everything which a citizen does in the country, costs him an incredible sum. In Europe, (heaven save the masses,) you may have the best of laboring men for twenty or thirty cents a day. Here you must pay them a dollar, at least our amateur must, though the farmers contrive to get their labor for eight or ten dollars a month and board. The citizen's home once built, he looks upon all heavy expenditures as over; but how many hundreds-perhaps thousands, has he not paid for out-buildings, for fences, for roads, &c. Cutting down yonder hill, which made an ugly blotch in the view, it looked like a trifling task; yet there were $500 swept clean out of his bank account, and there seems almost nothing to show for it. You would not believe now that any hill ever stood there or at least that nature had not arranged it all, (as you feel she ought to have done,) just as you see it. Your favorite cattle and horses have died, and the flock of sheep have been sadly diminished by the dogs, all to be replaced -and a careful account of the men's time, labor and manure on the grain fields, shows that for some reason that you cannot understand, the crop-which is a fair one, has actually cost you a trifle more than it is worth in a good market.

To cut a long story short, the larger part of our citizens who retire upon a farm to make it a country residence, are not aware of the fact, that capital cannot be profitably employed on land in the Atlantic states, without a thoroughly practical knowledge of farming. A close and systematic economy, upon a good soil, may enable, and does enable some gentlemen farmers that we could name, to make a good profit out of their land—but citizens who launch boldly into farming, hiring farm laborers at high prices, and trusting operations to others that should only be managed under the master's eye-are very likely to find their farms a sinking fund that will drive them back into business again.

To be happy in any business or occupation, (and country life on a farm is a matter of business,) we must have some kind of success in it; and there is no success without profit, and no profit without practical knowledge of farming.

The lesson that we would deduce from these reflections is this; that no mere amateur should buy a large farm for a country residence, with the expectation of finding pleasure and profit in it for the rest of his life, unless, like some citizens that we have known-rare exceptions-they have a genius for all manner of business, and can master the whole of farming, as they would learn a running hand, in six easy lessons. Farming, in the older states, where the natural wealth of the soil has been exhausted, is not a profitable business for amateurs-but quite the reverse. And a citizen who has a sufficient income without farming, had better not damage it by engaging in so expensive an amusement.

"But we must have something to do; we have been busy near all our lives, and

cannot retire into the country to fold our hands and sit in the sunshine to be idle.” Precisely so. But you need not therefore ruin yourselves on a large farm. Do not be ambitious of being great landed proprietors. Assume that you need occupation and interest, and buy a small piece of ground-a few acres only-as few as you please-but without any regard for profit. Leave that to those who have learned farming in a more practical school. You think, perhaps, that you can find nothing to do on a few acres of ground. But that is the greatest of mistakes. A half a dozen acres, the

capacities of which are fully developed, will give you more pleasure than five hundred poorly cultivated. And the advantage for you is, that you can, upon your few acres, spend just as little or just as much as you please. If you wish to be prudent, lay out your little estate in a simple way, with grass and trees, and a few walks, and a single man may then take care of it. If you wish to indulge your taste, you may fill it with shrubberies, and arboretums, and conservatories, and flower gardens, till every tree and plant and fruit in the whole vegetable kingdom, of really superior beauty and interest, is in your collection. Or, if you wish to turn a penny, you will find it easier to take up certain fruits or plants and grow them to high perfection, so as to command a profit in the market, than you will to manage the various operations of a large farm. We could point to ten acres of ground from which a larger income has been produced than from any farm of five hundred acres in the country. Gardening, too, offers more variety of interest to a citizen than farming; its operations are less rude and toilsome, and its pleasures more immediate and refined. Citizens, ignorant of farming, should, therefore, buy small places, rather than large ones, if they wish to consult their own true interest and happiness.

But some of our readers, who have tried the thing, may say that it is a very expen sive thing to settle oneself and get well established, even on a small place in the country. And so it is, if we proceed upon the fallacy, as we have said, that everything in the country is cheap. Labor is dear; it costs you dearly to day, and it will cost you dearly to-morrow, and the next year. Therefore, in selecting a site for a home in the country, always remember to choose a site where nature has done as much possible for you. Don't say to yourself as many have done before you-" Oh' I want occupation, and I rather like the new place-raw and naked though it may be. I will create a paradise for myself. I will cut down yonder hill that intercepts the view, I will level and slope more gracefully yonder rude bank, I will terrace this rapid descent, I will make a lake in yonder hollow." Yes, all this you may do for occupation, and find it very delightful occupation too, if you have the income of Mr. ASTOR. Otherwise, after you have spent thousands in creating your paradise, and chance to go to some friend who has bought all the graceful undulations, and sloping lawns, and sheets of water, natural, ready made-as they may be bought in thousands of purely natural places in America, for a few hundred dollars, it will give you a species of pleasure-ground-dyspepsia to see how foolishly you have wasted your money. And this, more especially, when you find, as the possessor of the most finished place in America finds, that he has no want of occupation, and that far from being finished, he has only begun to elicit the highest beauty, keeping and completeness of which his place is capable.