130 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



A suburban country life will most nearly meet their requirements ; 

 or, at least, they should select a site where some friends of congenial 

 minds have already made a social sunshine in the " wilderness of 

 woods and forests." 



Above all, we should counsel all persons not to underrate the 

 cost of building and improving in the country. Do not imagine 

 that a villa, or even a cottage ornee, takes care of itself. If you 

 wish for rural beauty, at a cheap rate, either on the grand or the 

 moderate scale, choose a spot where the two features of home scenery 

 are trees and grass. You may have five hundred acres of natural 

 park that is to say, fine old woods, tastefully opened, and threaded 

 with walks and drives, for less cost, in preparation and annual out- 

 lay, than it will require to maintain five acres of artificial pleasure- 

 grounds. A pretty little natural glen, filled with old trees and made 

 alive by a clear perennial stream, is often a cheaper and more un- 

 wearying source of enjoyment than the gayest flower-garden. Not 

 that we mean to disparage beautiful parks, pleasure-grounds, or 

 flower-gardens ; we only wish our readers about settling in the coun- 

 try to understand that they do not constitute the highest and most 

 expressive kind of rural beauty, as they certainly do the most ex- 

 pensive. 



It is so hard to be content with simplicity ! Why, we have 

 seen thousands expended on a few acres of ground, and the result 

 was, after all, only a showy villa, a green-house, and a flower-garden, 

 not half so captivating to the man of true taste as a cottage em- 

 bosomed in shrubbery, a little park filled with a few fine trees, a lawn 

 kept short by a flock of favorite sheep, and a knot of flowers woven 

 gayly together in the green turf of the terrace under the parlor win- 

 dows. But the man of wealth so loves to astonish the admiring 

 world by the display of riches, and it is so rare to find those who 

 comprehend the charm of grace and beauty in their simple dress ! 



