164 LANDSCAPB GARDENING. 



and enjoyment, and the smallest care and expenditure, will choos 

 a place naturally well wooded, or where open glades and bits o 

 lawn alternate with masses or groups, and, it may be, with extei 

 sive tracts of well-grown wood. A house once erected on such 

 site, the whole can very easily be turned into a charming labyrintl 

 of beautiful and secluded drives and walks. And as our improve 

 cultivates his eye and his taste, nature will certainly give him fres' 

 hints ; she will tell him how by opening a glade here, and piercin] 

 a thicket there, by making underwood occasionally give place t 

 soft turf, so as to show fine trunks to the greatest advantage, an 

 thereby bringing into more complete contrast some wilder an 

 more picturesque dell, all the natural charms of a place may b 

 heightened into a beauty far more impressive and significant tha 

 they originally possessed. 



Why man's perception of the Beautiful seems clouded ove 

 in most uncultivated natures, and is only brought out by a ceitai 

 process of refining and mental culture, as the lapidary bring 

 out, by polishing, all the rich play of colors in a stone that 'on 

 passes by as a common pebble, we leave to the metaphysicians t 

 explain. Certain it is, that we see, occasionally, lamentable prool 

 of the fact in the treatment of nature's best features, by her unti 

 tored children. More than one instance do we call to mind, of se 

 tiers, in districts of country where there are masses and great wood 

 of trees, that the druids would have worshipped for their grandeu 

 sweeping them all down mercilessly with their axes, and then plan 

 ing with the supremest satisfaction, a straight line of paltry sapling 

 before their doois ! It is like exchanging a neighborhood of prou 

 and benevolent yeomanry, honest and free as the soil they sprin 

 from, for a file of sentinels or gens-d'armes, that watch over one 

 outgoings and incomings, like a chief of police 1 



Most happily for our country, and its beautiful rural scenery, th 

 spirit of destmction, under the rapid development of taste that 

 taking place among us, is very fast disappearing. "Woodma 

 spare that tree," is the choral sentiment that should be instilled an 

 taught at the agricultural schools, and re-echoed by all the agricu 

 tural and horticultural societies in the land. If we have neither ol 

 castles nor old associations, we have at least, here and there, a 



