30 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



emerald turf, partially or entirely encompassed by rich, roll- 

 ing outlines of forest canopy, its widest expanse here broken 

 occasionally by noble groups of round-headed trees, or there 

 interspersed with single specimens, whose elegant trunks sup- 

 port masses of foliage flowing in outline, or gracefully droop- 

 ing to the very turf beneath them. In such a scene we be- 

 hold the azure of heaven, and its silvery clouds as well as 

 the deep verdure of the luxuriant and shadowy branches, re- 

 flected in the placid bosom of a sylvan lake : the shores of 

 the latter jutting out, and receding back, in gently curved 

 lines ; the banks, sometimes covered with soft verdure and 

 enamelled with flowers, and in other portions clothed with 

 luxuriant masses of verdant shrubs. Here are all the ele- 

 ments of what is termed natural beauty, — or a landscape 

 characterized by natural, easy, and flowing lines. 



For an example of the opposite character, let us take a stroll 

 to the nearest woody glen in your neighbourhood : perhaps 

 a romantic valley, half shut in on two or more sides by steep 

 rocky banks partially concealed and overhung by clustering 

 vines and tangled thickets of deep foliage. Against the sky 

 outline, breaks the wild and irregular form of some old half 

 decayed tree near by, or the horizontal and unique branches 

 of the larch or the pine, with their strongly marked forms. 

 Rough and irregular stems and trunks, rocks half covered 

 with mosses and flowering plants, open glades of bright ver- 

 dure opposed to dark masses of shadowy foliage, form 

 prominent objects in the foreground. If water enliven the 

 scene, we shall hear the murmur of the noisy brook, or the 

 cool dashing of the cascade, as it leaps over the rocky barrier. 

 Let the stream turn the ancient, and well-worn wheel of the 

 old mill in the middle ground, and we shall have an illus- 



