464 * THE VILLA GARDENER. 



variety which it exhibits, forms an agreeable contrast to the main walk on 

 the lawn front of the mansion, though along that walk, also, there are a few 

 very fine specimens of foreign trees and shrubs. Of some of these ; such as 

 a cedar of Lebanon, which, in 1836, was 90 ft. high, and which was planted 

 by the celebrated Judge Mansfield, with his own hands, about nmety years 

 before ; a larch of the same age and size ; and a Robinia Pseud-^cacia ; we 

 have, with the permission of the present earl, given portraits in our Arboretum 

 Britannicum. The oak woods, which are probably the oldest about London, 

 are remarkable for being composed almost entirely of Quercus sessihflora. 



504. The farm and farmery are conducted in the Scotch manner, under a 

 Scotch bailiff, who raises admirable crops of turnips, potatoes, and clover, the 

 soil being a deep sandy loam, iupinus polyphyllus has been tried here, as 

 an herbage plant, with success. 



505. Remarks. — Kenwood, being at no season of the year shown to strangers, 

 we regret to think that so few of our readers will have an opportunity of study- 

 ing there the effect of unity of expression in landscape, and of feeling the 

 powerful impression made by scenery so decidedly simple, rural, and sylvan, 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of London. The contrast is powerfully felt, 

 not only between this place and a crowded city, but between it and the extreme 

 artificialness of most other suburban residences. Gardeners, however, can 

 always visit gardeners, and they may profit from perusing these remarks, and 

 comparing them with the impression made on them by a visit to Mr. Cock- 

 burn, the gardener at Kenwood. One grand cause of the beauty of Kenwood, 

 though it is one that scarcely admits of imitation, consists in the prevalence 

 in it of natural oak woods, and the manner in which they are displayed by 

 the hilly and undulating surface of the ground. The same extent of wood on 

 a flat surface could never have presented more than a side view to the eye of 

 a spectator walking through the grounds ; and the beauty of the individual 

 trees in the interior of the wood must, consequently, have been entirely lost. 

 Whether a wood on a flat surface were a mere strip, or a mile in depth, the 

 effect to a stranger would be the same ; but in the amphitheatre at Kenwood, 

 the trees are raised one above another, they are in no part crowded together, 

 and not only display great extent of wood as a whole, but a degree of grandeur 

 and beauty in the individual trees, which they could not exhibit on any other 

 character of surface. Hence the impossibility of conveying. an equal expres- 

 sion of naturalness and sylvan grandeur in any place of smaller extent, or in 

 any place (whether large or small) having a flat surface. Another feature of 

 great interest connected with the woods of Kenwood is, that they form part 

 of the natural forest, which in by-gone ages surrounded London, and which 

 the progress of civilization has gradually cleared away ; many of the trees 

 are of the British Chestnut Oak {Quercus sessiliflora) , which is now seldom 

 found growing in a wild state in Great Britain, the common ' British oak 

 having nearly superseded it. * 



