Mansion Residences. *7 



covered with trees, neatly trained, and the gooseberry bushes 

 judiciously pruned. It is gratifying to see a gardener, who 

 like Mr. Webster, has been forty years in his situation, not 

 relaxing in any of his duties, and more especially in those of 

 order and neatness. 



Gilston Castle, which, when we before saw it, in 1805 

 then nearly completed, appeared to be in a naked, barren 

 hilly country, is now embosomed in woods, and all the hills 

 are more or less covered with thriving plantations. 



St. Mary's Isle is overgrown with wood, but with wood so 

 beautiful, both as to the individual trees and shrubs, and their 

 disposition in groups and masses, that we do not w^onder at 

 there being a reluctance to thin them out. The grounds 

 have, however, one unpardonable fault, and that is, they are 

 deficient in exotics ; without which, when laid out in the 

 natural style, there can be no gardenesque. At the time these 

 grounds were planted, the gardenesque and the picturesque 

 may be said to have been the same thing ; that is, plantations 

 formed in a picturesque or natural manner were then as cha- 

 racteristic of the grounds of the country residence of a man 

 of taste, as plantations in the geometrical style with straight 

 rows and avenues, characterised similar residences half a cen- 

 tury before. Both styles were gardenesque when it was their 

 turn to be in fashion ; but neither being at present exclusively 

 the mode, the characteristic of the gardenesque is now the pre- 

 valence of exotic trees and shrubs. This change in taste 

 shows a real advance in intellectual enjoyment; because it 

 carries with it the associations connected with genera and 

 species, in addition to those of form, colour, and combination. 

 In the kitchen-garden, at St. Mary's Isle, we found most 

 abundant crops of grapes and peaches ; the vine border, as we 

 were informed by our esteemed friend, Mr. Nesbitt, had not 

 been dug or stirred with the fork since we last saw it, twenty- 

 six years ago. 



Cally House \s a plain granite building, in a park of recent 

 formation, of great extent, of considerable variety of surface, 

 and abundantly clothed with wood. The situation of the 

 house, near an estuary formed by the m.outh of the river 

 Fleet, is very fine ; but, unfortunately, the entrance front is on 

 the wrong side, and none of the windows of the principal 

 rooms look towards the river. All the works executed about 

 Cally and the village of Gatehouse appear to be of the most 

 substantial kind ; but they are not all in that high and finished 

 taste that we expected to find them. The masses of trees in 

 the park are in many places too formal and unconnected ; and 

 there are single trees which neither group wilh them nor with 



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