HISTORICAL NOTICES. 
29 
to, yet the taste for elegant rural improvements is advancing 
now so rapidly, that we have no hesitation in predicting that 
in half a century more, there will exist a greater number of 
beautiful villas and country seats of moderate extent, in the 
Atlantic States, than in any country in Europe, England 
alone excepted. With us, a feeling, a taste, or an improve- 
ment, is contagious ; and once fairly appreciated and esta- 
blished in one portion of the country, it is disseminated with 
a celerity that is indeed wonderful, to every other portion. 
And though, it is necessarily the case where amateurs of any 
art are more numerous than its professors, that there will 
be, in devising and carrying plans into execution, many 
specimens of bad taste, and perhaps a sufficient number of 
efforts to improve without any real taste whatever, still we 
are convinced the effect of our rural embellishments will in 
the end be highly agreeable, as a false taste is not likely to 
be a permanent one in a community where every thing is so 
much the subject of criticism. 
With regard to the literature and practice of Landscape 
Gardening as an art, in North America, almost every thing 
is yet before us, comparatively little having yet been 
done. Almost all the improvements in the grounds of our 
finest country residences, have been carried on under the 
direction of the proprietors themselves, suggested by their 
own good taste, in many instances improved by the study 
of European authors, or by a personal inspection of the finest 
places abroad. The only American work previously published 
which treats directly of Landscape Gardening, is the Ameri- 
can Gardener's Calendar , by Bernard McMahon of Phila- 
delphia. The only practitioner of the art, of any note, was 
the late M. Parmentier of Brooklyn, Long Island. 
M. Andre Parmentier was the brother of that celebrated 
