48 LANDSCAPE GAKDENING. 



The earliest professors of modern Landscape (hardening 

 have generally agreed upon two variations, of which the 

 art is capable — variations no less certainly distinct, on the 

 one hand, than they are capable of intermingling and com- 

 bining, on the other. These are the beautiful and the pic- 

 turesque : or, to speak more definitely, the beauty charac- 

 terized by simple and flowing forms, and that expressed by 

 striking, irregular, spirited forms. 



The admirer of nature, as well as the lover of pictures 

 and engravings, will at once call to mind examples ot 

 scenery distinctly expressive of each of these kinds of 

 beauty. In nature, perhaps some gently undulating plain 

 covered with emerald turf, partially or entirely encompassed 

 by i-ich, rolling outlines of forest canopy, — ^its wildest ex- 

 panse here broken occasionally, by noble groups of round- 

 headed trees, or there interspersed with single specimens 

 whose trunks support heads of foliage flowing in outline, 

 or drooping in masses to the very turf beneath them. In 

 such a scene we often'behold the azure of heaven, and its 

 silvery clouds, as well as the deep verdure of the luxuriant 

 and shadowy branches, reflected in the placid bosom of a 

 silvan lake ; the shores of the latter swelling out, and reced- 

 ing, in gentle curved lines ; the banks, sometimes covered 

 with soft turf sprinkled with flowers, and in other portions 

 clothed with luxuriant masses of verdant shrubs. Here are 



to the Park. The flat of the terrace, being kid out either in the most formal 

 iind precise parterre, or in extremely rich and intricate beds of arabesque pat- 

 terns ill scrolls, to resemble carpets. In either case, groat use is made of 

 statues and fountains, very elaborately and artistically designed and executed," 

 and of Portugal Laurel, trimmed up to imitate orange-trees in tubs; as, also, 

 of the Irish and G-olden Yew, and other pyramiljal evergreens, either planted in 

 the ground, or in boxes, and, aW of different-colored gravel in the division 

 of the beds, the whole producing when seen fronj the windows of the house, 

 a brilliant combination, which, with the soft, verdant park as a background, is 

 inexpressibly gay and effective.— H. W. S. 



