HISTORICAL NOTICES, 
33 
still interesting Clermont , then the residence of Chancellor 
Livingston. Its level or gently undulating lawn, four or 
five miles in length, the rich native woods, and the long 
vistas of planted avenues, added to its fine water view, ren- 
dered this a noble place. The mansion, the green-houses, 
and the gardens, show something of the French taste in 
design, which Mr. Livingston’s residence abroad, at the time 
when that mode was popular, no doubt, led him to adopt. 
The finest yellow locusts in America are now standing in 
the pleasure-grounds here, and the gardens contain many 
specimens of fruit trees, the first of their sorts introduced 
into the Union. 
Waltham House , about nine miles from Boston, was, 25 
years ago, one of the oldest and finest places, as regards 
Landscape Gardening. Its owner, the late Hon. T. Lyman, 
was a highly accomplished man, and the grounds at Wal- 
tham House bear witness^ to a refined and elegant taste in 
rural improvement. A fine level park, a mile in lehgth, en- 
riched with groups of English limes, elms and oaks, and 
rich masses of native wood, watered by a fine stream and 
stocked with deer, were the leading features of the place at 
that time; and this, and Woodlands, were the two best 
specimens of the modern style, as Judge Peters’ seat, Lemon 
Hill, and Clermont, were of the ancient style, in the earliest 
period of the history of Landscape Gardening among us. 
There is no part of the Union where the taste in Land- 
scape Gardening is so far advanced, as on the middle portion 
of the Hudson. The natural scenery is of the finest cha- 
racter, and places but a mile or two apart often possess, from 
the constantly varying forms of the water, shores, and dis- 
tant hills, widely different kinds of home landscape and 
distant view. Standing in the grounds of some of the 
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