182 Landscape Gardening 



emerald in summer, and rich red as a ruby in autumn - 

 and all of them freer from the attacks of insects than either 

 larches, lindens, or elms, or a dozen other favorite foreign 

 trees, - - besides being unaffected by the summer sun where 

 horse chestnuts are burned brown, and holding their foliage 

 through all the season like native born Americans, when 

 foreigners shrivel and die; and yet we could name a dozen 

 nurseries where there is a large collection of ornamental 

 trees of foreign growth, but neither a sassafras, nor a pep- 

 peridge, nor perhaps a tulip tree could be had for love or 

 money. 



There is a large spirit of inquiry and a lively interest in 

 rural taste, awakened on every side of us, at the present 

 time, from Maine to the valley of the Mississippi; but the 

 great mistake made by most novices is that they study 

 gardens too much, and nature too little. Now gardens, in 

 general, are stiff and graceless, except just so far as nature, 

 ever free and flowing, reasserts her rights in spite of man's 

 want of taste, or helps him when he has endeavored to w'ork 

 in her own spirit. But the fields and woods are full of 

 instruction, and in such features of our richest and most 

 smiling and diversified country must the best hints for the 

 embellishment of rural homes always be derived. And yet 

 it is not any portion of the woods and fields that we wish our 

 finest pleasure ground scenery precisely to resemble. We 

 rather wisli to select from the finest sylvan features of 

 nature, and to recompose the materials in a choicer manner, 

 by rejecting any thing foreign to the spirit of elegance and 

 refinement which should characterize the landscape of the 

 most tasteful country residence -- a landscape in which all 

 that is graceful and beautiful in nature is preserved - - all 

 her most perfect forms and most harmonious lines - - but 

 with that added refinement which high keeping and contin- 

 ual care confer on natural beauty, without impairing its 

 innate spirit of freedom, or the truth and freshness of its 

 intrinsic character. A planted elm of fifty years, which 

 stands in the midst of the smooth lawn before yonder man- 

 sion, its long graceful branches towering up\vards like an 



