has admirably described the prevailing vice of our 

 domestic architecture. " The owner has built him- 

 self out of his house, and his house out of the land- 

 scape." He not only builds in defiance of the nature 

 of the ground, but he conceives a prejudice against 

 whatever the place naturally affords, and prefers such 

 features as are difficult and costly. He will prefer 

 gravel to grass, and will ostentatiously parade an 

 enormous driveway on the lawn side of his house, 

 thus sacrificing beauty and privacy to a feeling which 

 he would himself, probably, find it difficult to exj^lain. 

 He will prefer a stiff hedge to an informal shrubbery. 

 He not only choses plants W'hose culture involves 

 expense and difficulty, but he declares indiscriminate 

 war upon all the indigenous vegetation. Here again 

 the motive for the wrong steps seems altogether 

 inadequate, and they would, probably, in many cases 

 be avoided, if the owner would stop and think, not of 

 what the prevailing fashion demands, but of what 

 will give him real satisfaction. 



Lastly, we must notice the delusive idea of obtain- 

 ing immediate effects. No one, perhaps, deliberately 

 thinks that his landscape is to be realized at once. 

 Yet many act wholly without reference to the future, 

 haste blinding their eyes. There are three ways in 

 which the mischief appears. First, men are in such 

 a hurry to plant, that the question whether the soil 

 is fit for plantations is quite disregarded. Hence 

 arise the starved and sickly specimens everywhere 

 visible. Second, of all the characteristics of a tree, 



