LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS 



good; the farmer can account for it, and ac- 

 commodate his labors to it. But if it be a 

 fantasy merely, which requires him to back 

 his team and give inequality to his "lands," 

 his common-sense revolts at it; he sees an 

 empty device that interrupts his labor and pro- 

 vokes his contempt. The contempt, I think, 

 any man of true taste will share with him. 



There is nothing horrible in a straight line 

 (whatever some gardeners may think) upon 

 flat surfaces. I am inclined, indeed, to favor 

 strongly the old Dutch instinct for long 

 clipped avenues, and for the straight belts of 

 trees along their water-courses, in Holland. 

 Why should they puzzle themselves with 

 curves, where no curves were needed ? or over 

 the great sheep plains of Central France, what 

 mockery it would have been to conduct a 

 highway (or any other way for convenience) 

 by the meanderings which belong so naturally 

 to a highway of Devonshire! 



Of course, I speak of landscape here in a 

 large way. A man may very properly have 

 his door-yard and garden curvatures upon a 

 plane surface, if they be accounted for by judi- 

 cious planting. I have even seen little hil- 

 locks thrown up upon a two-acre patch of 

 adroitly arranged pleasure-ground which sug- 



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