LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 205 



moss of the Southern swamp lands festooned, tan- 

 gled, streaming down now fluttering in a light 

 breeze, and again drooping, as if with the weight of 

 woe, to the very earth. There was something mys- 

 teriously solemn and grave-like in it. The gnarled 

 oaks and the slowly swaying plumes of gray told the 

 completest possible story of the place. Had there 

 been no tombs there, you would have said that it was 

 the place of places where tombs should lie and the 

 dead sleep. I have alluded to the scene only to show 

 what and how much may be done by foliage and tree 

 limbs, with their investing mosses, to give character 

 to such a spot. 



Neither the live oak nor the Spanish moss is avail- 

 able, indeed, in our Northern latitudes ; but there are 

 various degrees of fitness in the trees at command. 

 The yew and the compact-headed Austrian pine, and 

 the balsam fir are always in their sables ; even the 

 much-degraded Lombardy poplar, in full vigor, car- 

 ries a ceremonious, self-possessed stifihess not unbefit- 

 ting ; while the glittering leaved beech, and horn- 

 beam, on the contrary, with their ceaseless, idle flut- 

 ter, are the most unseemly of chatter-boxes. The ash, 

 again, without liveliness of color has great dignity of 

 carriage, and in its half mourning of autumn purple is 

 one of the stateliest and fittest of attendants. 



I know there is a philosophy which denies the 



