i8o OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



A single outlying boulder will often illustrate by 

 contrast the smoothness of a lawn better than the 

 marks of a ponderous roller. One or two clumps of 

 alders along the side of a brooklet will designate its 

 course more effectively and pleasantly than if you 

 were to plant either bank with willows. A single 

 spiral tree in a coppice will be enough to bring out 

 all the beauty of a hundred round-topped ones. Be- 

 cause some simple rustic gate has a charming effect 

 at one point of your grounds, do not for that reason 

 repeat it in another. Because the Virginia creeper 

 makes a beautiful autumn show, clambering into the 

 tops of one of your tall cedars with its five-lobed 

 crimson leaflets, do not therefore plant it at the foot 

 of all your cedars. Because at some special point the 

 red rooflet of a gateway lights up charmingly the 

 green of your lawn, and fastens the eye of visitors, 

 do not for that reason make all your gateways with 

 red rooflets. If some far-away spire of a country 

 church conies through some forest vista to your eye, 

 do not perplex yourself by cutting forest pathways to 

 other spires. 



Again, (and I think I have trenched upon this topic 

 previously in the course of these pages,) every pos- 

 sessor and improver of a country estate, however 

 small or however large, should work upon clearly 

 defined plans, decided upon from the beginning. I 



