f itttbstap in Conncttinn toitir frn |)lanling, ^a, 



HEN" instructed taste goes hand in hand with cultivated 

 nature, scenery maybe created; by studying the varying 

 forms, and seizing on what some author calls "accidents," 

 graceful groups may be produced, full of intricacy, pos- 

 sessing a good sky outline as well as a gracefully fringed 

 vista ; if the position of the plantation has been well- 

 selected, groups complete in themselves as to form, and 

 conducive to the general effect, may certainly be calcu- 

 lated on. 



A guide to the kind of trees to be selected for plant- 

 ing a landscape, requires study and experience. We 

 hear it said, occasionally, that we have as good trees as 

 any other country ; our own opinion is, that we have 

 better ; and yet, variety, and those plants that are foreign to one's neighborhood, 

 are required to jjroduce the necessary effects. Loudon was among the first to 

 insist upon this, though many had studied it out without having given expression 

 to the fact. He taught that, in modern landscape-gardening, considered as a fine 

 art, all the more important beauties and elfects produced by the artist, may be 

 said to depend upon the use which he makes of foreign trees and shrubs. His 

 reasons for this are grounded on the principle that all art, to be acknowleged as 

 such, must be avowed. This is the case in the fine arts : there is no attempt to 

 conceal art in music, poetry, painting, or sculpture ; none in architecture ; and 

 none in the geometrical style of landscape-gardening. Why, he asks, should 

 there be an attempt to conceal art in modern landscape-gardening ? Because, 

 we shall be told, it is an art which imitates nature. But does not landscape- 

 painting also imitate nature ? and yet, in it, the work produced is acknowledged 

 to be one of art ? Before this point is settled, it is necessary to recur to what is 

 meant by the imitation of nature, and to reflect on the difference between repe- 

 tition and imitation. In what are called the imitative arts, it will be found that 

 the imitation is always made in such a manner as to produce a totally distinct 

 work from the thing imitated, and never, on any account, so like as to be mistaken 

 for it. In landscape-painting, scenery is represented by colors on a flat surface ; 

 in sculpture, forms, which in nature are colored, are represented in colorless stone. 

 The intention of the artist, in both cases, is not to produce a copy which shall be 

 mistaken for the original, but rather to show the original through the medium of 

 a particular description of art ; to reflect nature as in a glass. Now, to render 

 landscape-gardening a fine art, some analogous process must be adopted by the 

 landscape-gardener. In the geometrical style he has succeeded perfectly, by ar- 

 ranging grounds and trees in artificial surfaces, forms, and lines, so different from 

 nature as to be recognized at once as works of art. A residence thus laid out, is 

 clearly distinguished from the woody scenery of the surrounding country ; and is 

 so far satisfactory, as it displays the working of the human mind, and confers 

 distinction on the owner as a man of wealth or taste. 



A residence laid out in imitation of the undulations of nature, and the trees 

 scattered over it in groups and masses, neither in straight lines, nor cut into arti- 

 ficial shapes, might be mistaken for nature, were not the trees planted, chiefly of 

 foreign kinds not to be met with in the natural or general scenery of the country. 

 Everything in modern landscape-gardening, therefore, depends on foreign trees 



* iSee Frontispiece. 



YoL. VII —Feb. 1857. 



