OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



I have alluded to the possibility of artistic 

 landscape treatment in connection with farm- 

 lands; this opinion is, I am aware, opposed to 

 the traditional theory of the British writers 

 upon the subject; but we are living in advance 

 of a good many traditions of that sort. The 

 Duke of Marlborough keeps the open glades of 

 his park-land short and velvety by his herd of 

 fallow deer. Our wealthy citizen, on the other 

 hand, will probably keep his largest stretch of 

 level land in presentable condition with a 

 Buckeye Mower, and will depend upon the 

 cutting as a winter's baiting for his Alderney 

 heifers; but this will not forbid an occasional 

 group of oaks or maples, or the massing of 

 some graceful shrubbery around an intruding 

 cliff. It will never do, indeed, for us as Amer- 

 icans to sanction the divorce of landscape 

 from our humbler rural intentions — else the 

 great bulk of our wayside will be left without 

 law of improvement. Not only those broad and 

 striking effects which belong to a great range 

 of field and wood, or to bold scenery, come 

 within the domain of landscape art, but those 

 lesser and orderly graces that may be com- 

 passed within stone's throw of a man's door. 

 We do not measure an artist by the width of 

 his canvas. The panoramas that take in 



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