ARTIFICIAL ROCKERIES. 



Such subjects as these must make us feel with Emerson that " the destiny of organised 

 nature is amelioration, and who can tell its limits? It is for man to tame the chaos on 

 every side, while he lives to scatter the seeds of science and of song> that climate, corn, 

 animals, men, may be milder, and that the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied." 



ON ARTIFICIAL ROCKERIES. 



BY R. B. L., BOSTON. 



Among the numerous natural embellishments which are so abundantly scattered over 

 the surface of this country, and the natural facilities afforded for beautifying the private 

 pleasure-ground of the wealthy proprietor, there are but few instances where these natural 

 facilities have been advantageously turned to account in artificial decoration. 



It would appear the taste of the Puritans, which swept everything bearing the semblance 

 of grace and beauty, from their religious and civil architecture, inspired their decendants 

 Avith a taste no less justifiable of sweeping everything from ornamental grounds that has 

 the shape and form which nature gave it, and if a cropping rock or jutting ledge or pro- 

 jecting precipice, happen to come within the sacred limits of the so-called improvements, 

 it must of course, be blown to pieces, (to build stone walls, perhaps, though plenty more 

 may be found within a dozen j'ards of it,) nor is this pretext of utility itself always given, 

 for who would have rocks in their garden or shrubbery, when they may be seen plentiful- 

 ly in the fields and uncultivated wilds, so in accordance with this taste.^ Away go the rocks, 

 and their place — if it happens to be a slope — is supplied with a turf bank, yclept a terrace. 



Now if natural decorations increase the interest and beauty of a garden, accordingly 

 as they are treated in an artistic manner, so also do decorations merely artificial gain in 

 proportion as the}' resemble nature. But the artificial has never the value or the interest of 

 the natural, any more than a copy has the interest or value of an original picture from 

 the hands of one of the old masters. So truly is this the case, when applied to garden 

 scenery, that a place wholly artificial, however well executed, has nothing interesting or 

 pleasing about it, until by age, it has obtained something of a natural appearance. 



An object purely natural, in the midst of a pleasure-ground, is not only a pleasing re- 

 lief to the mind, but is also more striking and impressive, more august and grand, than 

 the ornamental vase, or the geometrical parterre. These may be pretty or beautiful, but 

 even the hard, cold, stern features of a projecting rock, gives us a nobler and more exalted 

 kind of i)leasure than these artificial nicities. The practice of imitating the rude works 

 of nature by making artificial rockeries has been attempted in England, on an extensive 

 scale, and in some instances has been carried to an extreme, nearly as ridiculous as the 

 famous rock of Semiramis, with all the rocks that lay in the shape of tributary kings 

 around her. The object in most of these rock builders seems to be, who will have the 

 largest pile, as if mere bulk were the only method of producing effect. Some of these 

 noble stone gatherers have been pretty largely imbued with the same notions that filled 

 the minds of the builders of the Pyramids, or the Tower of Babel, or the great wall of 

 China, collecting from all parts of the country, at enormous expense, boulders and con- 

 glomerates, large masses of spar and basalt, as if determined to leave behind them a last- 

 ing memorial of their extravagance and bad taste, in the shape of a huge unsightly pile 

 of stones. 



It has been remarked by some elegant writers, that these gigantic eflForts to im 



