172 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



at all reckon in my estimate of the relations of good 

 farming to the positive laws of taste. They are play- 

 farms, upon which it is thought necessary, (however 

 flat the surface,) to give to the fields all manner of 

 irregular and curvilinear shapes. Such an arrange- 

 ment is to every judicious farmer an affront. If a 

 field takes irregular shape for sufficient reason in its 

 surface, or encroachment of cliff, border territory, or 

 water, well and good ; the farmer can account for 

 it, and accommodate his labors to it. But if it be a 

 fantasy merely, which requires him to back his team 

 and give inequality to his " lands," his common-sense 

 revolts at it ; he sees an empty device that interrupts 

 his labor and provokes his contempt. The contempt, 

 I think, any man of true taste will share with him. 



There is nothing horrible in a straight line (what- 

 ever some gardeners may think) upon flat surfaces. 

 I am inclined, indeed, to favor strongly the old Dutch 

 instinct for long clipped avenues, and for the straight 

 belts of trees along their water-courses, in Holland. 

 Why should they puzzle themselves with curves, 

 where no curves were needed ? Or over the great 

 sheep plains of Central France, what mockery it 

 would have been to conduct a highway (or any other 

 way for convenience) by the meanderings which 

 belong so naturally to a highway of Devonshire ! 



Of course, I speak of landscape here in a large 



