12 • ' LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



icli "features of our richest and most smiling and diversified country 

 usttiie best hints for the embellishment of rural homes always be 

 jrived. And yet it is not any portion of the -woods and fields that 

 e wish our finest pleasure-ground scenery precisely to resemble. 

 le rather wish to sekct from the finest sylvan featm-es of nature, 

 id to recompose the materials in a choicer manner — by rejecting 

 ly thing foreign to the spirit of elegance and refinement which 

 lould characterize the landscape of the most tasteful country resi- 

 )noe — a landscape in which all that is graceful and beautiful in 

 iture is preserved — all her most perfect forms and most harmoni- 

 is lines — but with that added refinement which high keeping: and 

 mtinual care confer on natural beauty, without impairing its innate 

 liilt of freedom, or the truth and freshness of its intrinsic character. 



planted elm of fifty years, which stands in the midst of the smoolii 

 wn before yonder mansion — its long graceful branches towering 

 )wards like an antique classical vase, and then sweeping to the 

 ■ound with a curve as beautiful as the falling spray of a fountain, 

 is all the freedom of character of its best prototypes in the wild 

 oods, with a refinement and a perfection of symmetiy which it 

 ould be next to impossible to find in a wild tree. Let us take it 

 en as;thetype of all true art in landscape gardening— which selects 

 jm natural materials that abound in any countij, its best sylvan 

 atures, and by giving them a better opportunity than they could 

 herwise obtain, brings about a higher beauty of development and 

 more perfect expression than nature itself offers. Study landscape 



nature more, and the gardens, and their catalogues less, — is our 

 [vice to the rising generation of planters, who wish to embellish 

 eir places in the best and purest taste. 



