THE APPROACH. 25 



admitting the masses and groups of park 

 Scenery, the aid of shrubs may be allowed? 

 restrictintj them, however, to the more sober 



CD ^ 



classes, principally evergreens, leaving the 

 gayer varieties to heighten the beauty and 

 interest of the pleasure ground, properly so 

 called. I would have no flowers, nor any 

 thing that apparently required the gardener's 

 care beyond neatness of keeping; let the 

 evergreens trail upon the lawn, and no mould 

 be seen. To the introduction of exotics in 

 an approach of enlarged scale, I confess my- 

 self most hostile, having witnessed the ap- 

 proach even to a palace-like mansion carried 

 through miles of shrubbery ; and in other 

 places have seen what is scarcely less objec- 

 tionable, the approach through the wild 

 scenery of a natural wood, spotted and dis- 

 figured bypatches of shrubs and flowers. I cer- 

 tainly should never so decorate an approach. 

 If I find one so treated, where time has in 

 some degree softened the incongruity by 

 giving freedom and ruggedness to the ma- 

 terials, I deal with it the best I may, judging 

 it, in this, as in most other cases, safer to 

 make the best of what I find, than risk the 

 alternative of a radical reform. Sometimes, 



