LANDSCAPE GARDENING IN NEW-ENGLAND. 



man can best lay out his own grounds I" Equally well can every man be his own land- 

 scape painter, architect, or even tailor! Surely there can be no better evidence of inconi. 

 petency than the honest utterance of this assertion ! 



But if so much can be done within such narrow limits, a great deal more may be ex- 

 pected from those residences where from one to live or six acres are appropriated for that 

 kind of embellishment, to which we not altogether appropriately apply the term land- 

 scape gardening. 



A man of refinement would in these days, scarcely tolerate a geometrical arrange- 

 ment of grounds of this extent. Such places admit of a winding carriage-way, leading 

 through a fine lawn studded with groups of trees, irregularly circuitous walks, bordered 

 with various shrubbery; here and there a massive forest tree, standing in ita full develop- 

 ment singly upon the lawn; a summer-house embowered in the midst of a little retired 

 grove; arabesque forms of flower beds occasionally inserted in the midst of the smooth 

 green of a grass-plot; a vase, pretty even when empty, but better over-flowing with water, 

 which it costs not much to bring in a leaden pipe from some neighboring hill; — such are 

 among the charms which almost seem to make a little paradise of home. 



We have far too little of this in New-England, nor can we hope for more until the popu- 

 lar taste shall be educated for it. It may, indeed, be said that such labors are extrava- 

 gant and useless appropriations of money. Vastly more extravagant is it for a twent}'- 

 thousand-dollar man to build a ten thousand dollar house; and yet this thing has become 

 common among us. Suppose such men to build five thousand dollar houses, and to ex- 

 pend three thousand in the surrounding scenery — how immensely different the result! and 

 besides, two thousand dollars would then be left to silence the complaints of extravagance! 

 Neither is landscape gardening a useless art. Its productions feast the eye of every pass- 

 ing traveller; they refine the popular tase, and thereby exert a silent and hitherto unap- 

 preciated influence upon the morals of societ}'. They constitute a no mean portion of a 

 nation's pride at home, and of her renown abroad. 



We have arrived at the end of our sheet, and have just room left to express our earnest 

 hope to hear more from youself or others, upon this prolific and very interesting subject. 



Geo. Jaques. 



Worcester. Mass., Nov. 1851. 



Remarks. — Our correspondent is severe upon New-England taste, and he is partly just 

 and partly unjust. Partly just, because no where does one see so many snug houses be- 

 longing to persons of moderate means, the proportions of which are so faulty, and the ac- 

 cessories so rigidly wanting in grace, as in many parts of that portion of the Union; part- 

 ly unjust, because the country villages of New-England, with their beautiful avenues of 

 elms, and their republican air of rural order and adornment, afford evidences of taste far 

 above that of the rural tiwns of the rest of the country. 



We suspect the truth is, that the majority of the New-Englanders have given the sub- 

 ject less thought than in any part of the country. Whatever the New-Englandcr bestows 

 thought upon, grows into new life under his hand. But there are much fewer examples 

 of good taste in gardening and architecture, set by men of large wealth in New-England, 

 (if we except the environs of Boston,) than in New-York or Pennsylvania, while there are 

 more houses built, and places laid out by working-men of small means there, than in any 

 other part of the country. If we could establish a school in every considerable town in 

 New-England, next year, where drawing should be taught to artisans and mechanics — we 

 Avould undertake to promise that the whole taste of the country should be revolution 

 in ten years. The building of all the cottages of New-England is, at the present time 



