HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 175 
of curved and straggling walks, while the surface was all smooth lawn and 
the walks neatly graveled, were as far from nature, as a lady florist who 
should, for the same reasons, scatter her flower pots in wild irregularity 
over her parlor carpet. 
A straight cartpath is frequently made by our farmers through a level 
piece of woodland, and then left to nature, who embroiders its sides with all 
the herbs and flowers that habitually frequent such places. It never seemed 
to me, when I have been strolling through one of these rustic avenues, that 
it savored any less of nature, on account of its direct course. If it were 
very long, a walk in it would not be so pleasant as in an irregular or wind- 
ing avenue. Both are artificial, for nature makes no paths at all. But the 
plants arranged in almost straight lines in the one case, and in curve lines 
in the other, following the course of the path, are all equally natural, be- 
cause they are in each case the spontaneous growth of nature. 
I used formerly to visit the path of an ancient railroad which had long 
been deserted for a more commodious route. No traveling, except that of 
foot passengers, had passed over it for eight or ten years. Nature had taken 
possession of it, and she seemed to revel with delight in its long straight 
course. The bushes and other wild plants that embroidered its sides were 
charming to behold, when their irregular confusion was contrasted with the 
regular outline of the roadside. Surely, thought I, there is nothing in 
straight lines to which nature has any aversion, who seems not less willing 
to enter in and occupy this path, than if it were an elliptic or a cycloid, or 
no figure at all. Those appearances are attended with a singular charm 
where nature has taken into her own bosom a place once modeled by human 
art and then forsaken. The delightful sentiment of antiquity is always 
awakened by a scene of this kind : and the more grand and beautiful the 
original work thus returned to the hand that gave, the more profound is the 
emotion with which it is contemplated. While we tread upon the ruins, 
thus overgrown, of an ancient fortification, a dilapidated wall, or an old 
magnificent pleasure ground, we cannot help confessing that they have a 
charm, compared with which the beauty of the original work must have 
been insignificant. 
Those situations in which nature has been once subdued by man, and- 
afterwards allowed to resume her sceptre, are of all places the most delight- 
ful when she has completely re-established her empire over them. Such, I 
am confident, is their influence upon the majority of sensitive minds. It is 
not that they have more sympathy with nature than with humanity, but 
they feel that man must enjoy more happiness among the simple scenes of 
I 
