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already referred to, as the original and typical scenery of parks or 

 hunting grounds, and which is termed pastoral. It consists of com- 

 binations of trees, standing singly or in groups, and casting their 

 shadows over broad stretches of turf, or repeating their beauty by 

 reflection upon the calm surface of pools, and the predominant asso- 

 ciations are in the highest degree tranquilizing and grateful. As ex- 

 pressed by the Hebrew poet : " He maketh me to lie down in green 

 pastures ; He leadeth me beside the still waters." We know of no 

 other landscape effects that can be commanded, within the limitations 

 fixed by the conditions of this site, which experience shows to be 

 more desirable in a town park than these. This being the case, no 

 other should be sought for or retained, if, by discarding them, we 

 can the better secure these. Only so far, then, as we can, without 

 sacrificing any thing that will contribute to the highest practicable 

 ideal of pastoral scenery, should we endeavor to secure any degree 

 of those other ideals, of which the best types are found under widely 

 dissimilar circumstances. 



Although we cannot have wild mountain defiles, for instance, on 

 the park, we may have stony ravines shaded with trees and made 

 picturesque with shrubs, the forms and arrangement of which remind 

 us of mountain scenery. We may perhaps even secure some slight 

 approach to the mystery, variety and richness of tropical scenery, by 

 an assemblage of certain forms of vegetation, gay with flowers, and 

 intricate and mazy with vines and creepers, ferns, rushes and broad- 

 leaved plants. But all we can do in these directions must be con- 

 fessedly imperfect, and suggestive rather than satisfying to the im- 

 agination. It must, therefore, be made incidental and strictly sub 

 ordinate to our first purpose. 



Having formed these general plans, we find, in further studying 

 the site, its most important circumstance to be the fact, that a large 

 body of trees already exist upon it, not too old to be improved, yet 

 already old enough to be of considerable importance in a landscape. 

 These trees are in two principal divisions, between which a space of 

 two or three hundred feet in width is found, of undulating ground, 

 not wholly ungraceful, and now mainly covered with a ragged turf. 

 A few trees stand out singly upon this space. It is more nearly 

 level, and less occupied by trees, than any other portion of the site. 

 There is no rock in place upon it, nor would it be at all impracticable 

 to reduce its few abrupt and graceless hillocks, and fill up its gravel 

 pits and muck holes. If we imagine this to be done, and then look 

 at it in connection with the surrounding groves, it is obvious 

 that all that is required to form here a fair example of pastoral 



