How to Choose a Site for a Country Seat 215 



into groves of weeping elms and groups of overshadowing 

 oaks! 



Those, therefore, who wish to start with the advantage 

 of a good patrimony from nature will prefer to examine 

 what mother Earth has to offer them in her choicest nooks 

 before they determine on taking hold of some meagre 

 scene where the woodman's axe and the ploughman's fur- 

 row have long ago obliterated all the original beauty of the 

 landscape. If a place cannot be found well wooded, per- 

 haps a fringe of wood or a background of forest foliage can 

 be taken advantage of. These will give shelter and serve 

 as a groundwork to help on the effects of the ornamental 

 planter. We have seen a cottage or a villa site dignified 

 and rendered attractive forever by the possession of even 

 three or four line trees of the original growth judiciously 

 preserved and taken as the nucleus of a whole series of 

 belts and minor plantations. 



There is another most striking advantage in the posses- 

 sion of considerable wooded surface, properly located, in a 

 country residence. This is the seclusion and privacy of 

 the walks and drives, which such bits of woodland afford. 

 Walks, in open lawn, or even amid belts of shrubbery, are 

 never felt to have that seclusion and comparative solitude 

 which belong to the wilder aspect of woodland scenes. And 

 no contrast is more agreeable than that from the open 

 sunny brightness of the lawn and pleasure grounds, to the 

 retirement and quiet of a woodland walk. 



Again it is no small matter of consideration to many per- 

 sons settling in the country, the production of picturesque 

 effect, the working out of a realm of beauty of their own, 

 without any serious inroads into their incomes. One's pri- 

 vate walks and parterres, unluckily, cannot be had at the 

 cost of one's daily bread and butter - - though the Beautiful 

 overtops the useful, as stars outshine farthing candles. But 

 the difference of cost between keeping up a long series of 

 walks, in a place mainly composed of ilower-garden, shrub- 

 bery, and pleasure grounds, compared with another, where 

 there are merely lawns and sylvan scenery, is like that 



