122 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 12, 1890. 



other Pine forests produce such valuable material, and it is 

 not very evident where the world is to find a substitute for 

 our southern hard pine. 



The number of books which have been written on the 

 art of landscape-gardening since the arrangement of 

 gardens and of pleasure-grounds was elevated by the poets 

 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the rank of a 

 fine art appears surprisingly small, when the attention to 

 everything relating to country life, especially in England dur- 

 ing the last two hundred years, is remembered. It is not less 

 surprising that this literature is so generally overlooked, and 

 so little known by the very persons who would be expected 

 to be most interested in it, and that no serious effort has yet 

 been made by any of the great libraries to form a complete 

 collection of books relating to the history and arrangement 

 of gardens. There is, however, a re-awakening of interest in 

 the landscape-gardening art, especially in this country, where 

 there is now every indication that its principles are to be 

 more generally applied than they have ever been before, not 

 only in the construction of the parks and pleasure-grounds 

 which are springing into existence in the neighborhood of 

 all the great centres of population in the United States, but 

 in the more prosaic, but not less useful, arrangement of 

 towns and villages, to which the trained landscape-gar- 

 dener can bring the health, convenience and beauty 

 which will add so much to the material welfare and devel- 

 opment of the American people. As the knowledge of the 

 art increases and the importance of its relations to a civ- 

 ilized people comes to be more generally understood, 

 the interest in this literature, which contains a few works 

 of cardinal value, and several of great mechanical beauty, 

 will increase. It is desirable, therefore, that as complete 

 collections of these books as it is possible to secure should 

 be found on the shelves of our principal libraries, that those 

 who practice the art, and those who study its principles, 

 may have it within their power to learn all that books can 

 teach them on the subject. With this view in mind, and 

 for the purpose of aiding librarians in a search for books 

 relating to the garden, we have obtained the permission of 

 a correspondent to print the list of publications which have 

 appeared on the art of landscape-gardening since Bacon first 

 defined its scope and aims. The list has been prepared 

 under exceptionally favorable circumstances, and is much 

 fuller and more complete than any bibliography of the sub- 

 ject which has appeared. That it is not complete, however, 

 there is probably little doubt, and corrections and exten- 

 sions are asked for, in the interest of fuller information upon 

 a subject of much literary and artistic importance. 



Some Old American Country-Seats. 



Clermont. 



-IV. 



N : 



EW ENGLAND, in the old days before the growing up of 

 the great cities, possessed many towns in and near which 

 dwelt people of polite cultivation and polished manners, whose 

 sober, but often stately, mansions yet remain. In the seaboard 

 towns especially, such as Portsmouth, Newburyport, Salem and 

 New Bedford, still stand numerous examples of this appro- 

 priate urban architecture, substantial buildings, with light and 

 some space about them, and sometimes a court-yard enclosed 

 by a high wall in the English fashion. At Kittery, at New Bed- 

 ford and elsewhere, not to speak of numerous, but fast disap- 

 pearing, examples near Boston, mansions of this character 

 may be seen standing well out of town in small parks of their 

 own. It should be noted that the three old Bostonian coun- 

 try-seats, already described in this series of brief papers, have 

 been chosen only because of their exhibiting more than usual 

 breadth of landscape-setting, combined with more than usual 

 excellence of general design. 



Passing now from New England to New York, from the re- 

 gion of small hills and ponds and streams which surrounds 

 Boston to the prospect-commanding banks of the broad Hud- 

 son, and again selecting ancient country-seats which excel in 

 point of design, we come first to Montgomery Place, at 

 Barrytown. 



Barrytown is itself but a very small village, about ninety 



miles from New York and some fifty from Albany, and it is so 

 surprising to find here an old seat of the first class, that 

 this number of the series must be devoted to an explanation 

 of the fact. The Hudson River naturally attracted settlers 

 very early. The Dutch established a trading-post at Beaver- 

 wyck even before they built their fort of New Amsterdam, 

 and here the Van Rensselaers held sway as Patroons during 

 many years. After the English gained possession of the coun- 

 try, and renamed the chief towns New York and Albany, the 

 river-lands began to be parceled out among such persons as 

 applied for them and could persuade the Indians to sell their 

 hunting-grounds for coats, hatchets or beads. Among others 

 who thus obtained a manor was Robert Livingston, an immi- 

 grant of 1674, son of a clergyman who had been exiled to Hol- 

 land for non-conformity. This gentleman married the widow 

 of the Patroon, and was made lord of the manor of Livingston 

 in 1685 by Governor Dongan, who granted him title to 150,000 

 acres with a frontage of about fifteen miles on the east bank of 

 the Hudson River, opposite the Catskill Mountains. After a 

 younger son of his, also named Robert, had distinguished him- 

 self by frustrating an Indian plot, he set off the southern part 

 of his ample domain beside the river, and gave it to this son, 

 making him lord of a new manor, which he named Clermont. 

 The Clermont manor-house stands intact, its stout walls having 

 survived the fire set by British raiders just before Burgoyne 

 surrendered in 1777. It is approached by a long winding road, 

 which descends from the highway through a wild woodland. 

 Near the house the road divides to send a branch to the 

 kitchen-door and to the stable, and the main road ends with a 

 turn placed most unfortunately between the house and the 

 river. The house is a square building with two low 

 wings, and stands on a natural terrace within half a stone's 

 throw of the low bluff which here makes the river's shore. 

 Immediately behind it rises a bank of forest-trees, the edge 

 of Clermont Woods, and before it, in an irregular row on 

 the brink of the bluff, stand a dozen huge Locust-trees, 

 doubtless the ancestors of many others which adorn the nu- 

 merous Livingston properties along the river. One of these 

 great trunks measures six yards in circumference, and shows 

 to this day the marks of British cannon-shot. 



From Clermont a short walk southward through an avenue 

 of tall and crowded Locusts brings one to another and more 

 elaborate mansion, situated upon the same natural terrace, 

 backed by the same hanging woods, and commanding the 

 same view of the river and the Catskills. This house was 

 built by that Robert R. Livingston who was a delegate from 

 New York to the Congress of 1776, and became first Chancel- 

 lor of the State of New York, Minister to France and a patron 

 of Robert Fulton. The ground plan of his house is in the form 

 of an H. The central hall in the middle of the H is entered 

 from either court ; and a long corridor, which looks on the 

 river court, and is hung with family portraits, connects the 

 drawing-room in one wing with the dining-room in the other. . 

 The external walls of the house are white, the great rooms in 

 the low wings have long windows opening nearly to the 

 ground, and the two stories of the central block are crowned 

 by an elaborate white railing. Across the ends of the wings 

 and the river court extends a platform at which carriages may 

 draw up, and a carriage-road makes a rectangle about the 

 whole house. A more interesting example of domestic archi- 

 tecture in the formal style does not exist in America. Its 

 owners, men who were conspicuous in the political struggles 

 of the young Republic, were often compelled to make the long 

 journey to New York ; but they always returned to Clermont 

 as to their one permanent home — so strong, even after manorial 

 privileges had been abandoned, was their old English liking for 

 country-life and country-leisure. Montgomery Place, at Bar- 

 rytown, was an offshoot of these manorial seats at Clermont. 

 Like several other old seats upon the Hudson, it would never 

 have been created had not Governor Dongan and his superiors 

 in England attempted to plant in America the English manorial 

 system. 



Boston, Mass. Charles Eliot. 



The California University Gardens. 



A LTHOUGH the careful and constant work of Professor 

 ■**- Hilgard and his assistants has created what is already, 

 in important respects, a " Botanic Garden," it is modestly 

 divided, in his reports, into the "Agricultural Grounds," the 

 " Experimental Grounds " and the " Garden of Economic 

 Plants." Berkeley, although exposed to the sea winds, is high 

 above the valley, and much has been done to naturalize a 

 great variety of plants there which are popularly supposed to 

 thrive only in the southern counties of the state. 

 When the site for the University of California was to be 



