THE planter's GUIDE. 



45 



heavy and formal ; while the Oak, the Chestnut, and the 

 Elm, are far more various and picturesque, and are finely 

 calculated to receive great masses of light. But if these 

 striking characteristics of the latter be destroyed by the 

 axe, by what means shall they regain their former figure'? 

 To the painter, not less than to the landscape gardener, 

 this loss would be unspeakable, were it carried to any 

 extent. It is a fact well known to arboricultural 

 observers, that no large subject, once pollarded, ever 

 wholly recovers its natural and free conformation, under 

 the most propitious circumstances of soil and climate ; 

 although it may acquire at last a bushy head, it becomes 

 like the Lime — a tree which, unless on the foreground, is 

 always formal and monotonous in landscape. 

 I May we not, then, fairly conclude that, in the art of 

 giving immediate effect to wood, there is sufficient room 

 for the improvement of such a system In any view, it 

 will be thought of some moment if the most beautiful and 

 valuable of all vegetable productions can be saved from 

 mutilation — if picturesque effect can at the same time be 

 preserved, and many years of life anticipated. 



In fact, it appears that the best writers of the last 

 and present century consider the art as purely mechanical 

 and fortuitous, and founded on no fixed or known principles. 

 Mason, in the most elegant didactic poem of modern 

 times, in which an account of the art would certainly have 

 been given, as an interesting branch of landscape garden- 

 ing, had he regarded it as practical, mentions transplant- 

 ing in a very beautiful way indeed, but quite incidentally, 

 and merely as a mechanical art : — 



I " Such sentence pass'd, where shall the Dryads fly, 



' That haunt yon ancient vista ? — Pity, sure, 



Will spare the long cathedral aisle of shade 



In which they sojourn. Taste were sacrilege, 



