JUNE, 263 



is alone. If at the same time the solitary birds of the wil- 

 derness are seen and heard around him, the emotion of sol- 

 itude is the more vividly impressed upon his mind. Indeed 

 this feeling is seldom complete, until he hears those wild 

 notes from creatures that cautiously avoid the busy town and 

 its vicinity. It seems to me, therefore, an important princi- 

 ple in the art of creating landscape that there should be pres- 

 ent in it everything agreeable that is found in a wildwood, 

 and that everything artificial should be excluded that would 

 disturb those poetic feelings which are awakened by the real 

 scenes of nature. 



A landscape may be considered natural, if we find in it all 

 those productions which we meet in a forest, except its re- 

 dundances. All the indigenous plants must be there, though 

 they may grow in a better condition, and in a less crowded 

 entanglement than in the wilderness. The trees may have 

 a wider spread, and the shrubbery may grow more independ- 

 ently outside of the woods instead of forming only a mea- 

 gre undergrowth. The hand of man may have assisted the 

 plants to obtain their full development, without excluding 

 any species. The birds and other animals that are the true 

 tenants of the wildwood must also be present, whose appear- 

 ance, in moderate numbers, is the best evidence that the har- 

 mony of nature has not been disturbed. 



We find in the primitive forest an entangled and crowded 

 growth, and an excess of humidity, that render the charms 

 of nature unavailable to us, and many places inaccessible. 

 A great entanglement obstructs our passage and interferes 

 with the course of vegetation. Man, by removing these im- 

 pediments, does, in truth, render nature the more natural, as a 

 plant becomes more natural when removed from a dark cellar 

 into the open air. So long as no species of plant is destroyed 

 which would be found in the place, if it had not been sub- 

 jected to culture, and so long as each plant and animal enjoys 

 its native habitats and circumstances of growth, the land- 

 scape has not been denatui'alized by the removal of redun- 

 dances. 



The word natural is not sufficiently precise to be conven- 



