VII. 



DROPMORE. ENGLISH RAILWAYS. SOCIETY. 



September, 1850. 



DROPMORE is the seat of Lady Grenville, and has been cele- 

 brated, for some time, for its collection of rare trees especially 

 evergreens. It is in the neighborhood of Windsor, and I passed a 

 morning there with a good deal of interest. 



In point of taste and beauty, Dropmore disappointed me. The 

 site is flat, the soil sandy and thin, and the arrangement, in no way 

 remarkable. The mansion is not so fine as some upon the Hudson, 

 and the scenery about it, does not rise above the dead level of a 

 uniformity rendered less insipid by abundant plantations. There is, 

 however, a wilderness of flower-garden about the house, in which I 

 saw scarlet geraniums and garden vases enough to embellish a 

 whole village. The effect, however, was riant and gay without the 

 sentiment of real beauty. 



But one does not go to Norway to drink sherbet, and Dropmore 

 is only a show place by virtue of its Pinetum. This is its collec- 

 tion of evergreen trees, and particularly of the pine tribe every 

 species that will grow in England being collected in this one place. 



Of course, in a scientific collection of evergreen trees, there are 

 many that are only curious to the botanist many that are only valu- 

 able for timber, and many that are almost ugly in their growth or 

 at least present no attractive feature to the general eye. But there 

 are also, in this Pinetum, some evergreens of such rare and wonder- 

 ful beauty, growing in such exquisite perfection of development, 

 that they effect a tree-lover like those few finest Raphaels and Van- 



