(Barrens 259 



a miniature painter and handles a delicate brush, the 

 tip of which touches the tiniest spot and leaves 

 something living. The park has indeed its larger 

 lines, its open broad sweep and gradual slope to 

 which the eye accustomed to small enclosures re- 

 quires time to adjust itself. These left to themselves 

 are beautiful, they are the surface of the earth which 

 is always true to itself and needs no banks for artificial 

 hollows. The earth is right and the tree is right, 

 then either and all is wrong. The deer will not fit 

 into them then. " 



Washington Irving, although not known as a horti- 

 culturist or landscape gardener, nevertheless showed 

 fine discrimination in the method he chose for the 

 improvements of the lawns around his home near 

 Tarry town. This is what he says about English 

 landscape gardening in his Sketch Book: 



"The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, 

 and in what is called landscape gardening is un- 

 rivalled. They have studied nature intently and 

 discover an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and 

 harmonious combinations. Those charms which in 

 other countries she lavishes in wild solitudes, are 

 here assembled around the haunts of domestic life. 

 They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, 

 and spread them, like witchery, about their rural 

 abodes. Nothing can be more imposing than the 

 magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns 



