22 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
buildings, added to by each succeeding generation, who 
often preserve also the older portions with the most 
scrupulous care ; wide spread parks, clothed with a thick 
velvet turf, which, amid their moist atmosphere, preserves 
during great part of the year an emerald greenness — 
studded with noble oaks and other forest trees which 
number centuries of growth and maturity ; these advan- 
tages, in the hands of the most intelligent and the 
wealthiest aristocracy in the world, have indeed made 
almost an entire landscape garden of “ merry England.” 
Among a multitude of splendid examples of these noble 
residences, we will only *efer the reader to the celebrated 
Blenheim, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, where 
the lake alone (probably the largest piece of artificial 
water in the world) covers a surface of two hundred acres : 
Chatsworth, the varied and magnificent seat of the Duke 
of Devonshire, where there are scenes illustrative of almost 
every style of the art : and Woburn Abbey, the grounds 
of which are full of the choicest specimens of trees and 
plants, and where the park, like that of Ashbridge, 
Arundel Castle, and several other private residences in 
England, is only embraced within a circumference of from 
ten to twenty miles. 
On the continent of Europe, though there are a multi- 
tude of examples of the modern style of landscape 
gardening, which is there called the English or natural 
style, yet in the neighborhood of many of the capitals, 
especially those of the south of Europe, the taste for 
the geometric or ancient style of gardening still prevails 
to a considerable extent ; partially, no doubt, because that 
style admits, with more facility, of those classical and 
architectural accompaniments of vases, statues, busts, etc.. 
