ON WOOD A.VD PLANTATIONS. 93 



lower perception of beauty in the individual who employs 

 the geometrical style in such cases. A person, whose 

 place is surrounded by inimitably grand or sublime scenery, 

 would undoubtedly fail to excite our admiration, by at- 

 tempting a fac-simile imitation of such scenery on the small 

 scale of a park or garden ; but he is not, therefore, obliged 

 to resort to right-lined plantations and regular grass plots, 

 to produce something which shall be at once sufficiently 

 different to attract notice, and so beautiful as to command 

 admiration. All that it would be requisite for him to do 

 in such a case, would be to employ rare and foreign orna- 

 mental trees ; as for example, the horse-chestnut and the 

 linden, in situations where the maple and the sycamore are 

 the principal trees, — elegant flowering shrubs and beautiful 

 creepers, instead of sumacs and hazels, — and to have his 

 place kept in high and polished order, instead of the tan- 

 gled wildness of general nature. 



On the contrary, were a person to desire a residence 

 newly laid out and planted, in a district w^here all around 

 is in a high state of polished cultivation, as in the suburbs 

 of a city, a species of pleasure would result from the imita- 

 tion of scenery of a more spirited, natural character, 

 as the picturesque, in his grounds. His plantations are 

 made in irregular groups, composed chiefly of picturesque 

 trees, as the larch, &c. — his walks would lead through 

 varied scenes, sometimes bordered with groups of rocks 

 overrun with flowering creepers and vines ; sometimes 

 with thickets or little copses of shrubs and flowering 

 plants ; sometimes through wild and comparatively ne- 

 glected portions ; the whole interspersed whh open glades 

 of turf. 



In the majority of instances in the United States, the 



