HISTORICAL NOTICES. 28 



the passion for which pervades a people rich in ancient and 

 modern sculptural works of art. Indeed many of the 

 gardens on the continent are more striking from their 

 numerous sculpturesque ornaments, interspersed with 

 fountains and jets-d'eau, than from the beauty or rarity 

 of their vegetation, or from their arrangement. 



In the United States, it is highly improbable that we 

 shall ever witness such splendid examples of landscape 

 gardens as those abroad, to which we have alluded. Here 

 the rights of man are held to be equal ; and if there are 

 no enormous parks, and no class of men whose wealth is 

 hereditary, there is, at least, what is more gratifying to 

 the feelings of the philanthropist, the almost entire absence 

 of a very poor class in the country ; while we have, on 

 the other hand, a large class of independent landholders, 

 who are able to assemble around them, not only the useful 

 and convenient, but the agreeable and beautiful, in country 

 life. 



The number of individuals among us who possess wealth 

 and refinement sufficient to enable them to enjoy the 

 pleasures of a country life, and who desire in their private 

 residences so much of the beauties of landscape gardening 

 and . rural embellishment as may be had without any 

 enormous expenditure of means, is every day increasing. 

 And although, until lately, a very meagre plan of laying 

 out the grounds of a residence, was all that we could lay 

 claim to, yet the taste for elegant rural improvements is 

 advancing now so rapidly, that we have no hesitation in 

 predicting that in half a century more, there will exist a 

 greater number of beautiful villas and country seats of 

 moderate extent, in the Atlantic States, than in any 

 country in Europe, England alone excepted. With us, a 



