406 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



amove, into the history of the domestic life and habits of 

 tliose illustrious minds, will not, we are sure, forget that 

 lowly cottage by the side of the Avon, where the great 

 English bard was wont to dwell ; the tasteful residence 

 of Pope at Twickenham ; or the turrets and battlements 

 of the more picturesque Abbotsford ; and numberless other 

 examples of the rural buildings of England, once the 

 abodes of renowned genius. In truth, the cottage and 

 villa architecture of the English has grown out of the 

 feelings and habits of a refined and cultivated people, 

 whose devotion to country life, and fondness for all its 

 pleasures, are so finely displayed in the beauty of their 

 dwellings, and the exquisite keeping of their buildings and 

 grounds. 



We must be permitted to quote, in further proof of 

 English taste and habits, and their results in their country 

 residences, the testimony of our countryman, Washington 

 Irving, in one of his most elegant essays. " The taste of 

 the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is called 

 Landscape Gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied 

 nature intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her 

 beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those 

 charms which in other countries she lavishes in wild 

 solitudes, are here assembled around the haunts of 

 domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and 

 furtive graces, and spread them like witchery about their 

 rural abodes. Nothing can be more imposing than the 

 magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns that 

 extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there 

 clumps of gigantic trees heaping up rich piles of foliage 

 The solemn group of groves and woodland glades, with 

 the deer trooping in silent herds across them ; the hart 



