4.8 WOECESTEB COOTTT HORTICULTURAL SsOCIETT. [1881. 



shall saj that it has yet attained its majority ? Judged by the 

 standards I have named, who can fail to see that by as much as 

 the Eoman villa with its formal lines, or the Italian landscape 

 with its architectural accessories excels the gloomy Egyptian plot 

 of rectangular form, with its tanks of water and tufts of papyrus, 

 by so much are the English park, English lawn, and English 

 flower garden a triumph over those. 



And it is on the suggestions of the English style that our own 

 horticulture and landscape gardening is for the most part based. 

 Bulstrode and Cobham Hall have been reproduced in the suburbs 

 of Boston and upon the banks of the Hudson. 



^OT do we suffer by comparison. It is the judgment of spe- 

 cialists in horticulture — gentlemen of the widest observation and 

 experience, that for beauty and purity of taste, the ornamental 

 grounds of Mr. Hunnewell at Wellesley ai-e unsurpassed by any- 

 thing of a similar character in either the old world or the new. 



Laid out like an English park with its sweeping avenues and 

 endless vistas of velvety lawns, its rustic arches and arbors cur- 

 tained by climbing vines, and mirrored as it is in the crystal 

 waters of that loveliest of inland lakes — Lake Wabau — nothing 

 in Nature or Art seems wanting to make of this charming spot a 

 terrestrial paradise. 



At the last Convention of the National Pomological Society at 

 Boston, a few years since, the members were invited at the close 

 of the first day's session to visit Music Hall. Ostensibly it was 

 to be an Organ Concert, but the members of the Massachusetts 

 Society had" prepared for their friends a Horticultural surprise. 

 It was a feast of plants and flowers. Around the entire Hall 

 were arranged in endless profusion the choicest of flowers and 

 most exquisite of trailing vines. Its body was tilled with tower- 

 ing palms, foliage plants of infinite variety, and all the rare 

 exotics which the wealth of the tropics could furnish, while the 

 organ was embowered in ferneries, hanging baskets and rustic 

 stands. It seemed as though the greenhouses and conservatories 

 of the whole metropolis, with all its suburbs, had been emptied 

 ol their contents to make of Music Hall one great conservatory 

 for the gratification of their guests. 



As we stood upon the platform, gazing upon the never-to-be- 

 forgotten scene, beautiful beyond description, a delegate from a 

 distant State, lost in admiration, exclaimed in a sudden burst of 

 enthusiasm, "I tell you Boston is the only city in the world that 

 could do this thinsc I" 



This tribute, coming as it did from no mere tyro, but from a 

 gentleman of extensive travel and the highest culture, — the oracle 

 of his section, — was as significant and just as it was involuntary. 



