302 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



The trees, the flowers, the rocks, the waters, these, 

 These for your colors, brush and canvas seize. 

 Nature is yours : then let your fertile hand 

 The obedient elements to form command." 



In general, I shall endeavor to give the author's ideas in 

 prose, as my purpose is abridgment. He advises to study 

 nature as well as art, for have you not often, he asks, when 

 rambling amid the wild scenes of nature, been struck with 

 certain enchanting features, in a glade or dell, and compelled to 

 stop and admire it, as we pause to listen to a delightful strain 

 of music ? Fix the peculiar features of such a scene imme- 

 diately in your memory, transplant them to your own grounds, 

 and thus learn to rival nature's own magnificence. Mark 

 also where the plain has been adorned by some happy efforts 

 of taste ; examine all those places which, from age to age, 

 have been adorned by different hands, and in which the 

 different tastes of succeeding generations are displayed and 

 combined. Such scenes as these will often disclose original 

 beauties well worthy of imitation. 



When you are ready to commence your work, consult the 

 genius of the place, and strive not in opposition to it to add 

 foreign and uncongenial graces to the soil. Whatever the 

 grounds receive with a happy combination should be readily 

 transplanted. Then nature appears decked in her own 

 charms, and no imitation is detected. It was thus that Pous- 

 sin learned to surpass nature in his copies of her scenes. 

 There was a time when art seemed to delight in destroying 

 every appearance of nature ; she filled up vales and levelled 

 hills, till the eye was tired with the insipid flatness of the 

 landscape. Then came the rage for the very opposite course ; 

 new valleys were sunk and strange hills were thrown up. 

 But each of these extremes is to be avoided. Nature's ine- 

 qualities may be improved, and their effects enhanced. A 

 promontory may be rounded or rendered more bold ; natural 

 levels may be smoothed, and certain undulations of surface 

 may be made more graceful ; but, in all these operations, the 

 original features of the place must not be obliterated. 



