210 Landscape Gardening 



pation, and find it very delightful occupation too, if you 

 have the income of Mr. Astor. Otherwise, after you have 

 spent thousands in creating your paradise and chance to 

 go to some friend who has bought all the graceful undula- 

 tions and sloping lawns and sheets of water, natural, ready 

 made -- as they may be bought in thousands of purely 

 natural places in America, for a few hundred dollars, - - it 

 will give you a species of pleasure-ground-dyspepsia to see 

 how foolishly you have wasted your money. And this 

 more especially when you find, as the possessor of the most 

 finished place in America finds, that he has no want of 

 occupation, and that far from being finished, he has only 

 begun to elicit the highest beauty, keeping and complete- 

 ness of which his place is capable. 



It would be easy to say a great deal more in illustration 

 of the mistakes continually made by citizens going into the 

 country; of their false ideas of the cost of doing everything; 

 of the profits of farming; of their own talent for making an 

 income from the land, and their disappointment, growing 

 out of a failure of all their theories and expectations. But 

 we have perhaps said enough to cause some of our readers 

 about to take the step to consider whether they mean to 

 look upon country life as a luxury they are willing to pay 

 so much a year for, or as a means of adding something to 

 their incomes. Even in the former case they are likely to 

 underrate the cost of the luxury, and in the latter they 

 must set about it with the frugal and industrial habits of 

 the real farmer, or they will fail. The safest way is to 

 attempt but a modest residence at first, and let the more 

 elaborate details be developed, if at all, only when we have 

 learned how much country life costs, and how far the ex- 

 penditure is a wise one. Fortunately it is art and not nature 

 which costs money in the country, and therefore the beauty 

 of lovely scenery and fine landscapes (the right to enjoy 

 miles of which may often be had for a trifle), in connection 

 with a very modest and simple place, will give more lasting 

 satisfaction than gardens and pleasure grounds innumerable. 

 Persons of moderate means should, for this reason, always 



