196 Landscape Gardening 



What a disappointment to find that there is prose even 

 in country life, - - that meadows do not give up their sweet 

 incense, or corn-fields wave their rich harvests without care, 



-that "work-folks" are often unfaithful, and oxen stub- 

 born, even a hundred miles from the smoke of towns or the 

 intrigues of great cities. 



Another and a large class of those citizens who expect 

 too much in the country are those who find to their aston- 

 ment that the country is dull. They really admire nature 

 and love rural life, but though they are ashamed to confess 

 it they are "bored to death," and leave the country in 

 despair. 



This is a mistake which grows out of their want of knowl- 

 edge of themselves, and, we may add, of human nature 

 generally. Man is a social, as well as a reflective and de- 

 vout being. He must have friends to share his pleasures, 

 to sympathize in his tastes, to enjoy with him the delights 

 of his home, or these become wearisome and insipid. Cow- 

 per has well expressed the want of this large class and their 

 suffering when left wholly to themselves : - 



" I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd, 

 How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! 

 But give me still a friend, in my retreat, 

 Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet." 



The mistake made by this class, is that of thinking only 

 of the beauty of the scenery where they propose to reside 

 and leaving out of sight the equal charms of good society. 

 To them, the latter, both by nature and habit, is a neces- 

 sity, not to be wholly waived for converse of babbling 

 brooks. And since there are numberless localities where 

 one may choose a residence in a genial and agreeable coun- 

 try neighborhood, the remedy for this species of discontent 

 is as plain as a pikestaff. One can scarcely expect friends 

 to follow one into country seclusion if one will, for the sake 

 of the picturesque, settle on the banks of the Winnipissiogee. 

 These latter spots are for poets, artists, naturalists; men, 

 between whom and nature there is an intimacy of a wholly 



