ON \\OOD AND PLANTATIONS. 105 



to assist this effect ; he dehghts in occasional irregularity 

 of stem and outline, and he therefore suffers his trees here 

 and there to crowd each other ; he admires a twisted limb 

 or a moss covered branch, and in pruning he therefore is 

 careful to leave precisely what it would be the aim of the 

 other to remove ; and his pruning, where it is at all neces- 

 sary, is directed rather towards increasing the naturally 

 striking and peculiar habit of the picturesque tree, than 

 assisting it in developing a form of unusual refinement and 

 symmetry. From these remarks we think the amateur 

 will easily divine, that planting, grouping, and culture to 

 produce the Beautiful, require a much less artistic eye 

 (though much more care and attention) than performing 

 the same operations to elicit the Picturesque. The charm 

 of a refined and polished landscape garden, as we usually 

 see it in the Beautiful grounds with all the richness and 

 beauty developed by high culture, arises from our admira- 

 tion of the highest perfection, the greatest beauty of form, 

 to which every object can be brought ; and, in trees, a 

 judicious selection, with high cultivation, will always pro- 

 duce this effect. 



But in the Picturesque landscape garden there is visible 

 a piquancy of effect, certain bold and striking growths 

 and combinations, which we feel at once, if we know them 

 to be the result of art, to be the production of a pecuhar 

 species of attention — not merely good, or even refined 

 ornamental gardening. In short, no one can be a pictu- 

 resque improver (if he has to begin with young plantations) 

 who is not himself something of an artist — who has not 

 studied nature with an artistical eye — and who is not 

 capable of imitating, eliciting, or heightening, in his plan- 

 tations or other portions of his residence, the picturesque 



