Treatment of \\'alcr 111 



projecting boughs of some of the overarching trees. Along 

 the lower banks and closer margins, the growth of smaller 

 plants will be encouraged, and various kinds of wild Terns 

 may be so planted as partially to conceal, overrun, and 

 hide the rocks and stumps of trees, while trailing plants, as 

 the periwinkle and moneywort, will still further increase 

 the intricacy and richness of such portions. In this way, 

 the borders of the lake will resemble the finest portions of 

 the banks of picturesque and beautiful natural dells and 

 pieces of water, and the effect of the whole when time has 

 given it the benefit of its softening touches, if it has been 

 thus properly executed, will not be much inferior to those 

 matchless bits of fine landscape. A more striking and 

 artistical effect will be produced by substituting for native 

 trees and shrubs, common on the banks of streams and lakes 

 in the country, only rare foreign shrubs, vines, and aquatic 

 plants of hardy growth, suitable for such situations.* 

 While these are arranged in the same manner as the former, 

 from their comparative novelty, especially in such sites, 

 they will at once convey the idea of refined and elegant art. 

 If any person will take the trouble to compare a piece of 

 water so formed, when complete, with the square or circular 

 sheets or ponds now in vogue among us, he must indeed be 

 little gifted with an appreciation of the beautiful, if he do 

 not at once perceive the surpassing merit of the natural 

 style. In the old method, the banks, level, or rising on all 

 sides, without any or but few surrounding trees, carefully 

 gravelled along the edge of the water, or what is still worse, 

 walled up, slope away in a tame, dull, uninteresting grass 

 field. In the natural method, the outline is varied, some- 

 times receding from the eye, at others stealing out, and 



* This preference for rare exotics frequently evinced by Mr. Downing 

 was highly characteristic of him, his time and his disciples. It is a 

 curious fact that within 50 years his lineal descendants in the landscape 

 gardening cult should have excommunicated all foreign species and re- 

 quired every plant to bring a certificate of American origin. Hut this is 

 only one of the interesting deviations in the popular theory of I he natural 

 style, showing that the idea has always been more or less conventional- 

 ized. F. A. W. 



