REMARKS ON THE CYPRESS. 173 



but one sort of figure, which is that of a pyramid, and the yew tree 

 and pieca being more proper for the variety of forms of which they 

 are susceptablc, to adorn gardens, cypress has lately been neg- 

 lected, and the other two trees been more planted." Thus it is 

 evident that the cypress was driven out of the garden by the shears, 

 whose business it was to disfigure nature, by transforming ever- 

 greens into urns, sugar loaves, extinguishers, and a thousand other 

 whimsical devices, as suited the taste of the owner, or the ability 

 of theirgardeners, who have not been improperly called evergreen 

 tailors. But the cypress may now safely return to its station in 

 our plantations, since the shears have left the grove, and are now 

 as busily employed in disfiguring the human shape, as they were 

 formerly in mutilating vegetable beauties. 



There is no part of ornamental planting more difficult than the 

 distribution of evergreen trees, which are cither the most perma- 

 nent beauties of the grove, or the most gloomy features, accord- 

 ingly as they are dispersed. A plantation composed entirely of 

 trees that are not deciduous, has an aspect so sombre, that the 

 name of nevergreen may be more properly applied to them than 

 that of evergreen ; yet they cheer our winter scenes most beau- 

 tifully when happily blended with those deciduous trees, whose 

 colour and character assimilate best with them. But we are not 

 admirers of that regularity and uniformity so often offensive to the 

 eye in large plantations, where there is no deviation from the fir 

 and the larch, unless where death has made a gap, when you are 

 treated with a larch and fir through hill and dale to the end of the 

 plantation. 



The cypress seems admirably adapted to ornament those lawns 

 which surround villas or lodges built in the Grecian style, and 

 perhaps wc have no tree that accords so well with stone or stuc- 

 coed edifices as the cypress ; and even the temples of marble lose 

 half their effect if surrounded by other buildings instead of being 

 relieved by the foliage of trees. At the present time, the burial 

 hill of Pere-la-chaise, near Paris, forms a most interesting picture, 

 as the numerous and various formed monuments rise above the 

 young arbores vitae and cypresses, like a city of marble emerging 

 from a forest, and from which, a friend observes, we may form a 

 faint picture of the beautiful appearance of Constantinople from 

 the Bosnhorus ; the hills on which that city stands being inter- 

 mixed with white buildings and green foliage, which forms a 

 .spectacle not equalled in any other part of Europe. 



