290 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



them the " praise that comes to constancy." The joy with which 

 anyone in treaty for the purchase of an estate speaks of the " timber" 

 upon it, and the earnestness with which a " want of timber " is 

 deplored, demonstrate a larger love of trees than we should any- 

 where expect to find if we were to judge the case by the practices 

 that prevail in planting. Lovers of trees, and we may say the 

 designers and improvers of rural scenery, tend always to tread in 

 ancient tracks. We have no epithets of depreciation to spare for 

 oaks and elms and beeches, and we do not incline to say a word 

 against the soil-exhausting ash, or the heaven-hiding and lumpy- 

 headed chestnut. "We revere these trees ;. we glory in groves of 

 them ; we are never weary of their aspect at any season of the year, 

 and even when they are leafless we can find beauty and majesty in 

 their outline. Our complaint against the landscape gardeners and 

 the amateurs in trees is that, in the formation of the gardenesque, 

 they make small effort to obtain variety of effects, and trust too 

 much to the trees of the forest and the park for the decoration of 

 the garden. It is even so, but it should be far otherwise. What 

 should we say of the gardener who filled the borders on the terrace, 

 and the beds in the parterre with " pimpernels and wilding thyme," 

 but that he had mistaken his vocation, and sought on the breezy 

 hills of Britain for flowers when he ought to have been on a voyage 

 to the Cape ? There are garden flowers as there are woodland 

 flowers, there are garden trees as there are forest trees, and the 

 artist who can determine the proper scope of his work will always 

 recognize the distinction between them ; he will not go to the ex- 

 treme of saying that oaks and elms, and limes and beeches, should 

 never be seen in gardens ; for we should hesitate and consider many 

 times ere we should arrive at a determination to cut down a fine 

 example of a forest tree in any garden ; but we repeat that these 

 are not the subjects to be first thought of when the resolve has 

 been taken to form a garden, and the question arises as to the 

 selection of trees for it. Yet, for garden purposes, pictorial trees 

 abound : trees of large growth, of middling growth, and of miniature 

 growth ; trees that flower in spring, that fruit in summer, that 

 become glorious with colour when autumn passes her burning hand 

 amongst the leaves. We have weeping trees and laughing trees ; 

 we have solemn-leaved trees that enrich the well-planned scene with 

 their deep tones of colour, and we have variegated-leaved trees that 

 light it up with their grey and golden and silvery hues ; we have 

 trees with leafage like lace or gauze, and we have trees with foliage 

 so ponderous that one might imagine they had been cast in bronze, 

 with the object solely of creating beneath them the best possible 

 imitation of midnight, in contrast to the radiance of mid-day at 

 midsummer all around. We can imagine many of our readers 

 asking, " Where are these wondrous trees ? Let us see them ; 

 help us to select, and purchase, and plant, that we may realize the 

 outdoor pleasures you bespeak in connection with these things." 

 Where are they ? In the nurseries ! But how to see them, " there's 

 the rub." We may read of a golden-leaved tulip-tree, or a purple- 

 leaved maple-tree, or of a poplar that drops its thick-leaved boughs 



