38 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



swords ; yet the old French and Dutch gardens, as the appendage 

 of a quaint old house, are in my opinion, beautiful. They are like 

 many other things, not so much beautiful in themselves, as beauti- 

 ful by association, as memorials of certain characters and ages. A 

 garden, after all, is an artificial thing, and though formed from the 

 materials of nature, may be allowed to mould them into something 

 vel-y different from nature. There is a wild beauty of nature, and 

 there is a beauty in nature likened to art ; one looks for a very 

 different kind of beauty in fields and mountains, to what one does 

 in a garden. 



When we bear in mind that many of those artifices and figures 

 which we have been accustomed to treat with contempt as Dutch, 

 are in reality Roman ; that such things once stood in the magnifi- 

 cent gardens of Lucullus and Sallust, that the Romans gathered 

 them again from the Eastern nations ; that they are not only 

 classical, but that, like many of the rites of the church, and re- 

 ligious festivals, they are the relics of the most ancient times ; I 

 think we shall be inclined to regard them with a greater degree of 

 interest, not as objects to imitate, or to place in any competition 

 with our own more natural style, but as things which are of the 

 most remote antiquity, and give a curious diversity to our country 

 abodes." 



Of the general principles applicable to small suburban estates, 

 we shall first speak oi Adaptation. 



It not unfrequently happens that an estate comes into one's pos- 

 session upon which certain undesirable features may be presented 

 either by the dwelling, or by the grounds, or by both, with which 

 it is impracticable, or at least not desirable, to interfere. The 

 only course to be pursued, in such a case, is to make the best of 

 existing circumstances ; and it is in this adaptation of means to 

 ends that the executive abilities of the man of taste and good 

 judgment are best exhibited, tending often to the production of the 

 very best results. 



Congruity is one of the most important principles to be kept in 

 view in the arrangement of the smallest estate, and is one that is 

 perhaps more frequently violated among us than almost any other. 

 For example, it is not uncommon in looking from the house, to see 

 Upon one side of the estate, plantations of trees and shrubs 

 arranged in natural order, and on the opposite side, a straight 

 avenue flanked by trees in a formal manner. Here is an evident 



