in Masses of one Species. 409 



mens of the new style, it seemed to me, wherever pushed, as 

 it often is, to its extreme limits, to be even more insipid and 

 formal than the old one ; the masses of trees, when insulated 

 and distant, looking as lumpish and pudding-like as any clumps 

 that deform an English park, and when connected with their 

 masses, having almost invariably a meagre effect, utterly 

 devoid of that variety of outline and contrast of light and 

 shade so essential to picturesque beauty; and the masses of 

 shrubs resembling clipped hedges more than any thing else. 

 It would lead me too far to cite instances, but I may give one 

 of a shrubbery designed to ornament a very handsome public 

 building, which may serve for all the rest. This shrubbery 

 was planted in the following manner : — First came a mass of 

 lilacs for about 20 ft. in length, then one of mock orange for 

 15 ft., next one of laburnum for about 25 ft., and afterwards 

 masses of about the same extent of privet, acacia, and various 

 species of Cornus, i?ubus, and other common shrubs. As all 

 these masses, now grown to the ordinary height of the shrubs, 

 had been originally closely planted with plants of the same 

 size, each mass formed a hedge, as regular as if clipped, a 

 step higher or lower than the adjoining mass, and the whole 

 precisely resembled the shrub beds of a nursery, being not 

 one whit more interesting or more varied, except by the 

 autumnal decay of all the under leaves of some of the 

 masses, which then resembled a crowded plantation of goose- 

 berry bushes, ravaged by caterpillars. Insulated clumps of 

 shrubs, which I saw in different places, planted on the same 

 principle, with but one species in each clump, could be com- 

 pared to nothing so aptly as to dunghills clothed with a rank 

 vegetation of weeds, which, at a distance, they so exactly 

 resembled, that this was the comparison which a boy of four- 

 teen, along with me, immediately made when asked what he 

 thought they were most like, though he had no hint that-the 

 same idea had previously occurred to myself. 



In giving these as the impressions made on myself by 

 various specimens of the new style of planting, I by no means 

 wish it to be inferred that M. Sckell, or whoever was the 

 original author of the new system, is answerable for the very 

 obvious defects pointed out. Though I think the system thus 

 bad when pushed to an extreme, I have seen many instances in 

 which its partial adoption, — that is to say, where one species 

 of tree or shrub was made to predominate in certain quarters 

 of the pleasure-ground, but with an admixture of others 

 sufficient to give due relief and contrast, — had the happiest 

 effect: and J think it probable, judging from the park at 

 Munich, laid out, at the suggestion of Count Rumford, by 



