HISTORICAL NOTICES. 31 



grandly closing in with the tall blue summits of tne distant 

 Kaatskills. The smiling, gently varied lawn is studded 

 with groups and masses of fine forest and ornamental 

 trees, beneath which are walks leading in easy curves to 

 rustic seats, and summer houses placed in secluded spots, 

 or to openings affording most loveiy prospects. (See 

 Frontispiece.) In various situations near the house and 

 upon the lawn, sculptured vases of Maltese stone are alsc 

 disposed in such a manner as to give a refined and classic 

 air to the grounds. 



As a pendant to this graceful landscape, there is within 

 the grounds scenery of an opposite character, equally w T ild 

 and picturesque a fine, bold stream, fringed with woody 

 banks, and dashing over several rocky cascades, thirty or 

 forty feet in height, and falling altogether a hundred feet 

 in a distance of half a mile. There are also, within the 

 grounds, a pretty gardener's lodge, in the rural cottage 

 style, and a new entrance lodge by the gate, in the 

 bracketed mode ; in short, we can recall no place of 

 moderate extent, where nature and tasteful art are both 

 so harmoniously combined to express grace and elegance. 

 Montgomery Place, the residence of Mrs. Edward 

 Livingston, which is also situated on the Hudson, near 

 Barrytown, deserves a more extended notice than our 

 present limits allow, for it is, as a whole, nowhere sur- 

 passed in America, in point of location, natural beauty, or 

 the landscape gardening charms which it exhibits. 



It is one of our oldest improved country seats, having 

 been originally the residence of Gen. Montgomery, the hero 

 of Quebec. On the death of his widow it passed into the 

 hands of her brother, Edward Livingston, Esq., the late 

 minister to France, and up to the present moment has 



