266 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



who embroiders its sides with all the herbs and flowers that 

 habitually frequent such places. It never seemed to me, 

 when I have been strolling through one of these rustic ave- 

 nues, that it savored any less of nature, on account of its di- 

 rect course. If it were very long, a walk in it would not be 

 so pleasant as in an irregular or winding avenue. Both are 

 artificial, for nature makes no paths at all. But the plants 

 arranged in almost straight lines in the one case, and in curve 

 lines in the other, following the course of the path, are all 

 equally natural, because they are in each case the spontane- 

 ous growth of nature. 



I used formerly to visit the path of an ancient railroad 

 which had long been deserted for a more commodious route. 

 No travelling, except that of foot passengers, had passed over 

 it for eight or ten years. Nature had taken possession of it, 

 and she seemed to revel with delight in its long straight 

 course. The bushes and other wild plants that embroidered 

 its sides were charming to behold, when their irregular con- 

 fusion was contrasted with the regular outline of the road- 

 side. Surely, thought I, there is nothing in straight lines to 

 which nature has any aversion, who seems not less willing to 

 enter in and occupy this path, than if it were an elliptic or a 

 cycloid, or no figure at all. Those appearances are attended 

 with a singular charm where nature has taken into her own 

 bosom a place once modelled by human art and then forsaken. 

 The delightful sentiment of antiquity is always awakened 

 by a scene of this kind : and the more grand and beautiful 

 the original work thus returned to the hand that gave it, the 

 more profound is the emotion with which it is contemplated. 

 While we tread upon the ruins, thus overgrown, of an ancient 

 fortification, a dilapidated wall, or an old magnificent pleasure 

 ground, we cannot help confessing that they have a charm, 

 compared with which the beauty of the original work must 

 have been insignificant. 



Those situations in which nature has been once subdued 

 by man, and afterwards allowed to resume her sceptre, are 

 of all places the most delightful when she has completely re- 

 established her empire over them. Such, I am confident, is 

 their influence upon the majority of sensitive minds. It is 



