74 LANDSCAPE OARDENING. 



It has been remarked, that the geometric style would 

 always be preferred in a new country, or in any country 

 where the amount of land under cultivation is much less 

 than that covered with natural woods and forests ; as the 

 inhabitants being surrounded by scenery abounding with 

 natural beauty, would always incline to lay out their gar- 

 dens and -pleasure-grounds in regular forms, because the 

 distinct exhibition of art would give more pleasure by con- 

 trast, than the elegant imitation of beautiful nature. That 

 this is true as regards the mass of uncultivated minds, we 

 do not deny. But at the same time we affirm that it 

 evinces a meagre taste, and a lower state of the art, or a 

 lower perception of beauty in the individual who employs 

 the geometrical style in such cases. A person, whose 

 place is suriounded by inimitably grand or sublime scenery, 

 would undoubtedly fail to excite our admiration, by at- 

 tempting a fac-simile imitation of such scenery on the small 

 scale of a park or garden ; but he is not, therefore, obliged 

 to resort to right-lined plantations and regular grass plots, 

 to produce something which shall be at once sufficiently 

 different to attract notice, and so beautiful as to command 

 admiration. All that it would be requisite for him to do 

 in such a case, would be to employ rare and foreign orna- 

 mental trees ; as for example, the horse-chestnut and the 

 linden, in situations where the maple and the sycamore are 

 the principal trees, elegant flowering shrubs and beautiful 

 creepers, instead of sumacs and hazels, and to have his 

 place kept in high and polished order, instead of the tan- 

 gled wildness of general nature. 



On the contrary, were a person to desire a residence 

 newly laid out and planted, in a district where all around 

 is in a high state of polished cultivation, as in the suburbs 



