178 Gbe <3arDen 



choice and the disposition of the trees for effects 

 within are therefore a principal consideration. 

 Mere irregularity alone will not please ; strict 

 order is there more agreeable than absolute 

 confusion ; and some meaning better there than 

 none. A regular plantation has a degree of 

 beauty ; but it gives no satisfaction, because we 

 know that the same number of trees might be 

 more beautifully arranged. A disposition, how- 

 ever, in which the lines only are broken, with- 

 out varying the distances, is less natural than 

 any ; for though we cannot find straight lines 

 in a forest, we are habituated to them in the 

 hedgerows of fields ; but neither in wild nor in 

 cultivated nature do we ever see trees equi-dis- 

 tant from each other : that regularity belongs 

 to art alone. The distances therefore should be 

 strikingly different ; the trees should gather into 

 groups, or stand in various irregular lines, and 

 describe several figures ; the intervals between 

 them should be contrasted both in shape and in 

 dimensions ; a large space should in some places 

 be quite open ; in others the trees should be so 

 close together as hardly to leave a passage be- 

 tween them ; and in others as far apart as the 

 connection will allow. In the forms and the 

 varieties of these groups, these lines, and these 

 openings, principally consists the interior beauty 

 of a grove. 



