MAY. 217 



woodnymphs and other deities of the groves. The new 

 proprietor determined to adorn and improve it to the utmost 

 extent. He resolved that the decorations of the modern 

 landscape art should be added to the advantages it had de- 

 rived from nature; the beauties of other climes should be 

 engrafted upon it, and the whole work should be crowned 

 with the best efforts of the sculptor and the architect. 



In accordance with these plans, the work of beautifying 

 and improving the place was commenced. Standard English 

 works on landscape gardening were consulted ; the great 

 Italian painters were studied for hints which nature is sup- 

 posed to communicate only through their medium, and 

 Brown and Repton guided the taste of the improver in all his 

 operations. The rustic cottage was removed to a distant 

 spot, and a splendid Italian villa was erected in the place of 

 it. No labor nor money were spared in the effort to give it 

 all the external and internal finish which would be needful 

 to adorn a palace. Every piece of work was tasteful and 

 correct ; no counterfeit imitations of valuable ornaments were 

 allowed ; and when the edifice was completed, the most 

 scientific architect could find no fault with it. It stood forth 

 proudly on the brow of the hill, one of the master-pieces of 

 villa architecture. 



The elegance of the mansion made it the more apparent 

 that the grounds must be improved, that the appearance of 

 nature might harmonize with the work of the architect. On 

 the grassy slope that fronted the cottage, there were occa- 

 sional projections of the rock that was buried underneath the 

 soil, and around these, various species of wild shrubbery had 

 come up in many a tufted knoll. These prominences were 

 split off, and covered with loam, and the whole surface was 

 graded into a beautifully even and rounded lawn. The 

 wood anemone, the mouse-ear and the saxifrage no longer 

 spangled the grassy slope in early Spring, nor the aster nor the 

 golden rod stood there to welcome the arrival of Autumn. 

 But tulips grew proudly in a fanciful border of spaded earth, 

 under the side windows in the opening of the year, and ver- 



VOL. XXI. NO. V. 28 



