European Travel loi 



shingles to rot, no glued and puttied and painted gimcrackery 

 to warp and crack and moulder; and can never look so 

 shabby, and desolate, and dreary, as will nine-tenths of the 

 buildings of the same denomination now erecting about 

 New York, almost as soon as they lose the raw, cheerless, 

 imposter-Hke airs which seem almost inseparable from their 

 newness. 



A FERME ORN^E 



A few miles further on we came to a large, park-like 

 pasture, bounded by a neatly trimmed hedge, and entered 

 by a simple gate, from which a private road ran curving 

 among a few clumps of trees to a mansion about a furlong 

 distant. We entered, and rested ourselves awhile at the foot 

 of some large oaks. The house was nearly hidden among 

 trees, and these, seen across the clear grass land, were the 

 finest groups of foliage we had ever seen. A peculiar charac- 

 ter was given it by one or two copper -leaved beeches — large, 

 tall trees, thickly branched from the very surface of the 

 ground. (These trees, which are frequently used with great 

 good effect in landscape gardening in England, are rare in 

 America, though they may be had at the nurseries. There 

 are two sorts, one much less red than the other.) The cattle 

 in this pasture-lawn were small and black, brisk and wild- 

 looking, but so tame in reality, that as we lay under the tree, 

 they came up and licked our hands like dogs. The whole 

 picture completely realized Willis's beautiful ideal, "The 

 Cottage Insoucieuse." 



EATON PARK 



In the afternoon we walked to Eaton Park. 

 Probably there is no object of art that Americans of 

 cultivated taste generally more long to see in Europe than 



