54 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



ways 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 gardens and pleasure- 

 grounds in regular forms, because the distinct exhibition of 

 art alone would give more pleasure by contrast, than the ele- 

 gant 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 was surrounded by inimitably grand, 

 or sublime scenery, would undoubtedly fail to excite our ad- 

 miration, by attempting to imitate 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 both be 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 ornamental 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 tangled 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 of a city, a spe- 

 cies of pleasure would result from the imitation of scenery of a 

 more spirited natural character, — as the picturesque, — in his 



