214 Landscape Gardening 



ures of wood and water, and spread out undulating sur- 

 faces, which seem absolutely to court the finishing touches 

 of the rural artist. Place a dwelling in such a site and it 

 appropriates all nature's handiwork to itself in a moment. 

 The masses of trees are easily broken into groups that have 

 immediately the effect of old plantations, and all the minor 

 details of shrubbery, walks, and flower and fruit gardens, 

 fall gracefully and becomingly into their proper positions. 

 Sheltered and screened and brought into harmony with the 

 landscape, these finishing touches serve in turn to enhance 

 the beauty and value of the original trees themselves. 



We by no means wish to deter those who have an abun- 

 dance of means, taste, enthusiasm and patience, from under- 

 taking the creation of entire new scenery in their country 

 residences. There are few sources of satisfaction more 

 genuine and lasting than that of walking through extensive 

 groves and plantations, all reared by one's own hands - 

 to look on a landscape which one has transformed into 

 leafy hills and wood-embowered slopes. We scarcely re- 

 member more real delight evinced by any youthful devotee 

 of our favorite art, in all the fervor of his first enthusiasm, 

 than has been expressed to us by one of our venerable 

 ex-Presidents,* now in a ripe old age, when showing us, 

 at various times, fine old forest trees, oaks, hickories, etc., 

 which have been watched by him in their entire cycle 

 of development, from the naked seeds deposited in the 

 soil by his own hands, to their now furrowed trunks and 

 umbrageous heads! 



But it must be confessed that it is throwing away a 

 large part of one's life and that too, more especially, 

 when the cup of country pleasures is not brought to the 

 lips till one's meridian is well nigh past - - to take the whole 

 business of making a landscape from the invisible carbon 

 and oxygen waiting in soil and atmosphere, to be turned 

 by the slow alchemy of ten or twenty summers' growth 



* Undoubtedly this refers to Mr. Downing's intimate friend, John 

 Quincy Adams, to whom his book on "Landscape Gardening" was 

 dedicated. F. A. W. 



