174 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



of them can confirm and establish the neatness and 

 order of his fields. There is, indeed, an artificiality 

 about his straight lines of crops, and his rectangular 

 enclosures which does not tempt the painter ; but it 

 is an artificiality that excuses itself. There is a fitness 

 and propriety in it, which, when contrasted, as it 

 may be, with the farmer's clumps of pasture shade, 

 his wayside trees, and his leafy screen of the farm 

 buildings, is not without a certain charm. 



Lands not Farmed. 



f I ^HERE is, however, a higher grade of landscape 

 -* beauty than can belong to lands tilled for their 

 economic returns, just as there is a higher grade of 

 man than the agricultural laborer. I propose to 

 indicate some of the methods by which this higher 

 beauty may be made to declare itself. First of all, in 

 the immediate neighborhood of every country home- 

 stead, (the site and architecture being already deter- 

 mined on, and not, therefore, subject to present dis- 

 cussion,) there must be neatness and order; no 

 tangled weedy growth, no paths half matted over : 

 there must be abundant evidence of that presiding 

 and watchful care without which every homestead, 

 whether within or without, lacks its most considera- 

 ble charm. If the beauty of the remoter landscape 



