28 



around the domestic altar; whether bursting the fast of winter, 

 it opens its buds in spring-time, or yielding to the chill- 

 ing blasts it scatters its autumn -leaves — it conveys in all its 

 phases and through all its changes no emotions which are not 

 in harmony with the highest refinement of the soul. 



When, with the skillful hand of unperceived art, its 

 blended beauties are made more harmonious by the cautious 

 pruning of trees, the nice distribution of flowers and plants of 

 tender growth, the introduction of the green slope of velvet 

 lawn, and the silver gleam of water, and then through public 

 munificence all this is spread out in the heart of the busy city 

 — at the feet of the weary toiler — it supplies a void in his exist- 

 ence and sets in operation the purest and most ennobling of 

 external influences, which gather strength for food as the mind 

 becomes more refined and more appreciative in the contact. 



The substitution of art for nature in the improvement of 

 public grounds had its origin in an age, when the beauties of 

 nature were unknown and unfelt, and among a people whose 

 worship of art was a national characteristic, and who regarded 

 an artistic display as an essential accompaniment of imperial 

 grandeur. 



A later and higher degree of civilization has developed that 

 love for the real beauties of nature which has stamped itself 

 upon the English character, which is modifying the old system 

 pursued in France, and which is gaining such rapid progress in 

 this country. The overthrow of the ancient ideas was not 

 accomplished without an effort, and not until some of the finest 

 minds of Great Britain had been enlisted in the cause, and had 

 shown the folly of one system and the beauties of the other. 



To return to the old method now would be to abandon all 

 progress and to substitute the obsolete for the true. If the an- 

 cient style should become the orthodox, it will be the death 

 blow of rural improvement in this country on the score of ex- 

 pense alone, since the very nature of the system is to know no 

 limit in expenditure. One construction begets another, until 

 nature is obliterated and art becomes supreme — rural simplicity 

 gives place to extravagant pretensions, and we find too late that 

 we have destroyed the very thing we sought to create. 



Since then the dictates of good taste and of economy pre- 

 scribe that the natural features of the surface should be the 



