BEAUTIES AND PRINCIPLES OF THE ART. 
59 
vantages of a suitable convenience for habitation. A certain 
artist-like feeling is necessary, to enable one to relish the 
picturesque. For this reason, the many, see and feel the 
power of beauty in her graceful, flowing forms ; but it is 
only the imaginative few, who appreciate her more free 
and spirited charms. There are perhaps a thousand, who 
admire the smoothness, softness, and flowing outlines, that 
predominate in the lawn and pleasure grounds, as we usually 
see them, where there is one who would prefer a cottage in 
a highly irregular and picturesque valley, or a castle on a 
rocky crag ; though the latter, may, to certain minds, be 
incomparably more enchanting. 
We shall, therefore, keep distinctly in view the two 
schools, in treating of the practice of the art. There are 
always, circumstances which must exert a controlling influ- 
ence over amateurs, in this country, in choosing between the 
two. These are, fixed locality, expense, individual prefer- 
ence in style of building, and many others which readily 
occur to all. The great variety of attractive sites, in the 
older parts of the country, afford an abundance of indica- 
tions for either taste. Within the last five years, we think 
the picturesque is beginning to be preferred. It has, when 
a suitable locality offers, great advantages for us. The raw 
materials of wood, water, and surface, by the margin of 
many of our rivers and brooks, are at once appropriated 
with so much effect, and so little art, in the picturesque 
mode ; the annual tax on the purse too, is so comparatively 
little, and the charm so great ! 
On the other hand, the residences of a country of level 
plains, usually allow only, the beauty of simple, and graceful 
forms ; and the larger demesne, with its swelling hills and 
noble masses of wood, (may we not, prospectively, say the 
