HOLLYS A PERFECT REMEDY. 15 



shelter, save where they are sheltered themselves; 

 and the Weymouth, more delicate, thrives only in 

 the deep glen, or in the bosom of a large plantation. 

 An appeal to fact may be had in a matter so im- 

 portant as to involve nearly all the merits of the 

 strip; and no where will the reader find one of forty 

 or sixty feet in breadth, which has not, at a cer- 

 tain age, all the unseemliness ascribed, together, 

 with the vexing appearance of a scheme that has 

 miscarried. The strip becomes an open shed 

 having some roof indeed, but no other walls than 

 a few naked posts supply. Plantations of such 

 breadth upon low and level grounds have a good 

 effect on the distant landscape; but where they 

 appear on heights, verge the horizon, and stand re- 

 lieved against the sky, they have all the wretched- 

 ness of a ragged garment; and having such aspect 

 near a house, where they are designed for warmth 

 and seclusion, it were better not to have them. In 

 the first period of their growth, they afford but the 

 pleasures of hope ; then, for a season they give an 

 air of snugness to the dwelling: and then, as the 

 planter is growing old, they are getting bare; and, 

 looking through his poor strip, he sees from hedge 

 to hedge the withered grass partly broken and 

 partly waving in the winter winds. In point of 

 taste, such a plantation is downright ugliness, and 

 in point of utility its condemnation is, that it does 

 not answer the end. 



Plant hollys instead of firs, and every inconve- 

 nience will disappear. You will have no pain or 



