0\ WOOD AND PLANTATIONS. 73 



returns of gratitude, raise a most delightful train of 

 sensations in the mind; so innocent and rational, that 

 they may justly rank with the mi»st exquisite of human 

 enjoyments." 



" Happy is he, who in a country life 

 Shuns more perplexing toil and jarring stiife; 

 Who lives upon the natal soil he loves. 

 And sits beneath his old ancestral groves." 



To this, let us add the complacent feelings with which a 

 man in old age may look around him and behold these 

 leafy monarchs, planted by his boyish hands and nurtured 

 by him in his youthful years, which have grown aged and 

 venerable along with him ; 



" A wood coeval with himself he sees. 

 And loves his own contemporaiy trees." 



Plantations in the Ancient Style. In the arrange- 

 ment and culture of trees and plants in the ancient style 

 of Landscape Gardening, we discover the evidences of 

 the formal taste, — abounding with every possible variety 

 of quaint conceits, and rife with whimsical expedients, 

 so much in fashion during the days of Henry and Eliza- 

 beth, and until the eighteenth century in England, and 

 which is still the reigning mode in Holland, and parts of 

 France. In these gardens, nature was tamed and subdued, 

 or as some critics will have it, tortured into every shape 

 which the ingenuity of the gardener could suggest ; and 

 such kinds of vegetation as bore the shears most patiently, 

 and when carefully trimmed, assumed gradually the 

 appearance of verdant statues, pyramids, crowing cocks, 

 and rampant lions, were the especial favorites of the 

 gardeners of the old school. 



