WOBDRN ABBEY. S3S 



line upwards of 1,000 feet long: A fine specimen of the latter tree,' 

 twenty-five or thirty feet high, attracted niy attention; and there 

 was an()ther, twenty-five feet, of the heautiful Norfolk Island pine, 

 growing in the open ground, with the shelter of a glazed frame in 

 vnnter. These pleasure-grounds, however, interested me most in 

 that portion called the Ainerican garden^— several acres of sloping 

 velvety turf, thickly dotted with groups of rhododendrons, azaleas, 

 &c., forming the richest masses of dark green foliage that it is pos- 

 sible to conceive. In the months of May and June, when these are 

 in fiill bloom, this must be a scene of almost dazzling brilliancy. 

 The soil for them had all been formed artificially, and consisted of a 

 mixture of peat and white sand, in which the rhododendrons and 

 k*lmias seemed to thrive admirably. 



Besides this scene, there is a garden composed wholly of heaths, 

 the beds cut in the turf, one species in each bed, and fiill of delicate 

 bells ; a parterre flower-garden in which a stiiking effect was pro- 

 duced by cpntrasting vases colored quite black, with rich masses 

 (growing in the vases) of scarlet geraniums. I also saw a garden 

 devoted wholly to willows, and another to grasses — ^both the most 

 complete collections of these two genera in the world — the t^ste of 

 the former Dukft — aijd with which I was familiar beforehand, 

 ^ough- the " Salictum Wohwrnense" and Mr. Sinclair's work on 

 the " Orames of Woburn.'" 



The park is, the richest in large evergreens of any that I have 

 ever seen. The planting taste of the former Duke has produced at 

 the present moment, after a growth of fifty or sixty years, the most 

 superb results. The Cedars of Lebanon — the most sublime and 

 venerable of all trees, and the grandest of all evergreenSj bore off 

 the palm — though all the rare pines and firs that were known to 

 arboriculturists half a century ago are here in the greatest perfection 

 — including hoUies and Portugal lam-els which one is accustomed 

 to think of as shrubs, with gi-@at trunks like timber trees and mag- 

 nificent heads gf glossy foliage. A grand old silver fir has a 

 straight trunk eighty feet high, and a lover of trees could 'spend 

 weeks here without exhausting the arboricultural interest of the 

 park alone — which is, to be sure, some ten or twelve miles round. 



A very picturesque marceau in the park, inclosed and forming 



