PARADISES. 79 



I must be excused for using tliis word so often : but I use 

 it in the original Persian sense, as a place in which natural 

 beauty has been helped by art. An English park or garden 

 would have been called of old a paradise ; and the enceinte 

 of a West Indian house, even in its present half-wild con- 

 dition, well deserves the same title. That Art can help Kature 

 there can be no doubt. " The perfection of Xature " exists 

 only in the minds of sentimentalists, and of certain well- 

 meaning persons, who assert the perfection of Xature when 

 they wish to controvert science, and deny it when they 

 wish to prove this earth fallen and accursed. Mr. l^esfield 

 can make landscapes, by obedience to certain laws which 

 Mature is aj)t to disregard in the struggle for existence, more 

 beautiful than they are already by Xature ; and that without 

 introducing foreign forms of vegetation. But if foreign forms, 

 wisely chosen for their shapes and colours, be added, the 

 beauty may be indefinitely increased. For the plants most 

 capable of beautifying any given spot do not always grow 

 therein, simply because they have not yet arrived there ; as 

 may be seen by comparing any wood planted witli Ehodo- 

 dendrons and Azaleas with the neiohbourinii wood in its 

 native state. Thus may be obtained somewhat of that variety 

 and richness which is wanting eA^erywhere, more or less, in 

 the vegetation of our northern zone, only just recovering 

 slowly from the destructive catastrophe of the glacial epoch ; 



