LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 33 



the various stages of progress from its condition of savage 

 dreariness to that of smiling culture. 



But in the arrangement of towns no advance has been 

 made from the original rectangular fashion, which even 

 when the site is level, is on many accounts objectionable 

 while with every departure from an even surface, the 

 advantages become apparent of adapting the arrangement 

 of the streets to its inequalities. 



Every one who is familiar with the river towns of the 

 West will recall innumerable instances of enormously 

 expensive works in cutting down hillsides and building 

 up embankments ; of the almost total destruction of valu- 

 able building sites ; in one place by their being left in an 

 inaccessible position on the top of a precipice ; in another 

 by being exposed to all the drainage of a street which is 

 iar above them, while all the naturally beautiful or pic- 

 turesque features of the place have been destroyed or 

 rendered hideous in the effort to make them conform to 

 a rectangular system, as if the human intellect were as 

 powerless to adapt itself to changing circumstances as the 

 instinct of insects, whose cells are constructed on an 

 unvarying pattern. 



A/11 these evil results might be obviated by due fore- 

 thought and the exercise of judgment and taste in adapt- 

 ing the arrangement to the site ; and now that we have 

 reached the point when vast regions may be controlled 

 by companies or individuals, and the sites and plans of 

 towns can be selected and pre-ordained, it is unworthy of 

 the progress of the age in science and art that no advance 

 should be made in a matter of such importance. 



