28 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



five miles in length, the rich native woods, and the long 

 vistas of planted avenues, added to its fine water view, 

 rendered this a noble place. The mansion, the green- 

 houses, and the gardens, show something of the French 

 taste in design, which Mr. Livingston's residence abroad, 

 at the time when that mode was popular, no doubt, led 

 him to adopt. The finest yellow locusts in America are 

 now standing in the pleasure-grounds here, and the 

 gardens contain many specimens of fruit trees, the first of 

 their sorts introduced into the Union. 



Waltham House, about nine miles from Boston, was, 25 

 years ago, one of the oldest and finest places, as regards 

 Landscape Gardening. Its owner, the late Hon. T. 

 Lyman, was a highly-accomplished man, and the grounds 

 at Waltham House bear witness to a refined and elegant 

 taste in rural improvement. A fine level park, a mile in 

 length, enriched with groups of English limes, elms, and 

 oaks, and rich masses of native wood, watered by a fine 

 stream and stocked with deer, were the leading features 

 of the place at that time ; and this, and Woodlands, were 

 the two best specimens of the modern style, as Judge 

 Peters' seat, Lemon Hill, and Clermont, were of the an- 

 cient style, in the earliest period of the history of Land- 

 scape Gardening among us. 



There is no part of the Union where the taste in Land- 

 scape Gardening is so far advanced, as on the middle por- 

 tion of the Hudson. The natural scenery is of the finest 

 character, and places but a mile or two apart often 

 possess, from the constantly varying forms of the water, 

 shores, and distant hills, widely different kinds of home 

 landscape and distant view. Standing in the grounds of 

 some of the finest of these seats, the eye beholds only the 



