164 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



and enjoyment, and the smallest care and expenditure, will choose 

 a place naturally well wooded, or where open glades and bits of 

 lawn alternate with masses or groups, and, it may be, with exten- 

 sive tracts of well-grown wood. A house once erected on such a 

 site, the whole can very easily be turned into a charming labyrinth 

 of beautiful and secluded drives and walks. And as our improver 

 cultivates his eye and his taste, nature will certainly give him fresh 

 hints ; she will tell him how by opening a glade here, and piercing 

 a thicket there, by making underwood occasionally give place to 

 soft turf, so as to show fine trunks to the greatest advantage, and 

 thereby bringing into more complete contrast some wilder and 

 more picturesque dell, all the natural charms of a place may be 

 heightened into a beauty far more impressive and significant than 

 they originally possessed. 



Why man's perception of the Beautiful seems clouded over 

 in most uncultivated natures, and is only brought out by a certain 

 process of refining and mental culture, as the lapidary brings 

 out, by polishing, all the rich play of colors in a stone that one 

 passes by as a common pebble, we leave to the metaphysicians to 

 explain. Certain it is, that we see, occasionally, lamentable proofs 

 of the fact in the treatment of nature's best features, by her untu- 

 tored children. More than one instance do we call to mind, of set- 

 tlers, in districts of country where there are masses and great woods 

 of trees, that the druids would have worshipped for their grandeur, 

 sweeping them all down mercilessly with their axes, and then plant- 

 ing with the supremest satisfaction, a straight line of paltry saplings 

 before their doors ! It is like exchanging a neighborhood of proud 

 and benevolent yeomanry, honest and free as the soil they spring 

 from, for a file of sentinels or gens-cFarmes; that watch over one's 

 outgoings and incomings, like a chief of police ! 



Most happily for our country, and its beautiful rural scenery, this 

 spirit of destruction, under the rapid development of taste that is 

 taking place among us, is very fast disappearing. "Woodman, 

 spare that tree," is the choral sentiment that should be instilled and 

 taught at the agricultural schools, and re-echoed by all the agricul- 

 tural and horticultural societies in the land. If we have neither old 

 castles nor old associations, we have at least, here and there, o.d 



