614- Notice of some Gardens and Country Seats 



foreign scenery is greatly heightened by the introduction here and 

 there of single specimens of exotic trees of remarkable forms, stand- 

 ing out from conspicuous prominences of masses and thickets, and 

 in the recesses and glades formed by them ; while in other places 

 native trees and plants are alone seen. An araucaria, a deodar 

 cedar, a liquidambar, a purple beech, or a weeping tree of 

 some sort, now and then engages the eye, and we forget for the 

 moment that we are among native scenery in a transition state, 

 till, as we advance, we see masses of fern, or groups of the birch 

 or the common oak. In the masses there are a great many 

 pines, firs, cedars, junipers, taxodiums, and, in short, every tree 

 or shrub purchasable in British nurseries. There are some fine 

 thriving araucarias, some of them 5 or 6 feet high ; a deodar 

 cedar, 10 ft. high; Pin us variabilis, 15 ft. high; P. ponderosa, 

 15 ft. high ; some remarkably luxuriant plants of Pinus Laricio; 

 and rhododendrons and azaleas without number. We have 

 seldom seen a place improved so much after our own heart, as 

 far as planting is concerned. The only fault that we could find 

 with it was, the too hedge-like appearance of the laurels in one 

 part of the approach, where they had obtruded on it so much as 

 to require to be cut in a formal manner, inconsistent with the 

 picturesque character which prevails everywhere else. How- 

 ever, two hours' work of a man with a hedge-bill would remove 

 this deformity. 



The house is Roman, large, but totally without merit as a 

 piece of architecture. The kitchen-garden and farm offices are 

 at some distance from the house, on the other side of a public 

 road, and the walk to them is through a plantation of trees in 

 masses, in which one kind always prevails in one place, but in 

 which each mass is so blended with the mass adjoining as never 

 to appear formal. We should pi-efer arriving at this garden by 

 a tunnel under the I'oad, and we would so contrive the walk, after 

 it passed through the tunnel, that no part of the garden should 

 be seen till we were half-way down the slope on which it stands. 

 We should then enter the garden at a point where we would 

 look up to the terraced walls, instead of looking down upon 

 them ; and, after passing through the garden in a horizontal 

 direction, we should enter another walk on the opposite side 

 (having a branch to the farm buildings), and return to the plea- 

 sure-ground scenery by a second tunnel, or even by the same 

 one. The present mode of descending to the kitchen-garden, by 

 the walk that passes the gardener's house, is bad, on account of 

 the steep descent by a straight walk with steps. The garden 

 itself is excellent, and does Mr. Main, who fixed on the situation 

 eight or ten years ago, great credit. The outsides of the walls 

 are sheltered from lateral winds by projecting constructions of 

 wattled work, which are found very effective. There is a com- 



