Wood and Plantations 53 



under our care and attention, -- nothing more interesting 

 than to examine their progress, and mark their several 

 peculiarities. In their progress from plants to trees, they 

 every year unfold new and characteristic marks of their 

 ultimate beauty, which not only compensate for past cares 

 and troubles, but like the returns of gratitude, raise a most 

 delightful train of sensations in the mind, so innocent and 

 rational, that they may justly rank with the most exquisite 

 of human enjoyments." 



"Happy is he, who in a country life 

 Shuns more perplexing toil and jarring strife; 

 Who lives upon the natal soil he loves, 

 And sits beneath his old ancestral groves." 



To this, let us add the complacent feelings with which a 

 man in old age may look around him and behold these 

 leafy monarchs, planted by his boyish hands and nurtured 

 by him in his youthful years, which have grown aged and 

 venerable along with him; 



"A wood coeval with himself he sees, 

 And loves his own contemporary trees." 



Plantations in the Ancient Style. In the arrangement and 

 culture of trees and plants in the ancient style of Land- 

 scape Gardening, we discover the evidences of the formal 

 taste, - - abounding with every possible variety of quaint 

 conceits, and rife with whimsical expedients, so much in 

 fashion during the days of Henry and Elizabeth, and until 

 the eighteenth century in England, and which is still the 

 reigning mode in Holland, and parts of France. In these 

 gardens, nature was tamed and subdued, or as some critics 

 will have it, tortured into every shape which the ingenuity 

 of the gardener could suggest; and such kinds of vegeta- 

 tion as bore the shears most patiently, and when carefully 

 trimmed, assumed gradually the appearance of verdant 

 statues, pyramids, crowing cocks, and rampant lions, were 

 the especial favorites of the gardeners of the old school.* 



These whimsies do not belong to the formal style and are no more 

 appropriate to it than to the natural style. The mistake of imputing 

 them to the formal style, however, has been common, especially in earlier 

 years. -- F. A. W. 



