652 Notes oji Gardens and Country Seats : — 



with flints, to prevent the rabbits from scraping them. The 

 soil of the kitchen-garden is a very strong clay ; and Mr. 

 Brown can only get crops of large onions by sowing them in 

 the autumn and transplanting them in the spring. 



St. Leonard's Hill, Mrs. Harcou7i. — This place is chiefly 

 remarkable for the extensive views which it commands of the 

 surrounding country, and especially of Windsor Castle. The 

 woods are dense, and composed chiefly of oak and beecli ; 

 but along the roadside, between this place and Virginia Water, 

 extensive plantations have lately been formed of a mixture of 

 oak, birch, Scotch pine, and larch fir, which we can by no 

 means approve of. In point of ornament, such a mixture is 

 out of the question, since it produces the most disagreeable 

 kind of artificial monotony, that of a perpetual recurrence of 

 discordant forms. In point of utility it is bad, because the 

 oaks are overtopped by pines and larches, which are planted 

 as nurses ; but which are totally unnecessary as such, in a 

 soil and climate like the present. Supposing oaks alone had 

 been planted, and thinned out as they advanced in their 

 growth, the general appearance of the plantation would at all 

 times have been agreeable, because it would have presented 

 the same kind of forms variously disposed ; and all the trees 

 would have grown vigorously, because no one tree would have 

 robbed another, whether of nourishment, air, or light, these 

 properties being shared equally among them. The hedges to 

 these plantations were generally clipped: a superfluous ex- 

 pense, since they would have been just as effective as fences 

 if left without cutting or clipping ; and, every six or seven 

 years, they would have produced a quantity of faggot-wood. 

 The nice point to hit, in rural management, is, to incur no 

 expense whatever that will not produce an adequate return. 

 Between corn fields of small size, clipped hedges will pay, 

 by their greater admission of light and air to the fields, both 

 while they are in preparation for the crop, and while the crop 

 is growing ; and they are also, from their diminished and 

 close compact surface, less liable to harbour birds and insects : 

 but mere plantation fences require none of these considerations 

 to be taken into view as guides for their management. All 

 that is wanting in the case of plantations is protection ; and if 

 the plants are kept clear of weeds, and left to take their natural 

 forms, a sufficiently formidable fence will be produced ; and, 

 at the same time, one of that description of natural or pic- 

 turesque beauty, which will be more in accordance with a 

 plantation of trees than a clipped formal boundary of green. 



Virginia Water. — We saw the whole of this much talked 

 of scene for the first time; and, like most of the other garden 



