I have only today, after returning from the West, been able to look over your drawings. My object in asking you to send them was simply to know for what work I could if opportunity offered suggest your employmnt, not to criticise or advise. But as you invite me, I will observe that it strikes me that your study & practice so far as indicated has been too much limited to small pleasure-ground work in which consistent broad effects of natural landscape are out of the question. The only illustration of what I regard as the higher field of landscape gardening is that to which you refer of the work of Puckler Muskau, which I wish much that I had seen. I don’t mean to speak disrespectfully of pleasure ground & flower garden work such as is nearly always called for near a house and which alone gives much general employmt to gardeners but only to urge you to be ambitious to be master in higher fields, as to which you can learn little in the Central Park or in any of the situations open or likely to be open to you. Take any of these therefore as means of living and make yourself as perfect as possible in all that pertains to them & all that you can learn in them, but by reading & reflection and such excursions as you can afford for enjoyment of natural scenery educate yourself above them. For this purpose a day’s walk along the valley of any stream or among the foot hills of any mountain range would be worth more to you than a year in the park. I do not mean to advise you to neglect study of improved scenery. There are various places on the Hudson, Hyde Park laid out by Dr Hosack; for example, in which magnificent nature gains by foregrounds of art. You will find most referred to in Downing’s Landscape Gardening. But bear always in mind that landscape gardening has natural scenery and the art to conceal art as its highest aim and that where we have one man qualified for work of this higher kind there are thousands in competition for the lower fields.

Aim to free yourself from German associations, not because they are [589] not excellent but because you have been too much confined in your education to them and they are likely to cramp your capabilities and limit your influence and opportunities. Remember that in America the German demand for landscape gardening is likely to be but a small part of all that is to come and you don’t want to be tied to it, or, give the impression that you are. Your writing shows that your English is much affected by German idioms & your English vocabulary not as copious as desirable. Hold yourself one of the universal republic of art, free to receive light, free to work, on all sides.

Seek in the public libraries and read, study deliberately, the older English works on landscape gardening. Repton, Loudon, Gilpin, above all Price (on the Picturesque). All are faulty & to be read discriminatingly but all are in earnest and of high ideals, and in your present stage will be of invaluable service in keeping them before you.

A railway company in Missouri may want a man to take charge of a public picnic or excursion ground. The President is to be in New York soon and having your address may ask you to call on him. He is himself a landscape gardener of great ability. I mention it only that if he should send for you, you may {be} prompt and prepared to present yourself to advantage.