24 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
feeling, a taste, or an improvement, is contagious ; and 
once fairly appreciated and established 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 tc 
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 everything 
is so much the subject of criticism. 
With regard to the literature and practice of Landscape 
Gardening as an art, in North America, almost everything 
is yet before us, comparatively little having yet been 
done. Almost all the improvements of 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 American Gardener s Calendar , by Bernard 
McMahon of Philadelphia. 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 
horticulturist, the Chevalier Parmentier, Mayor of Enghien, 
Holland. He emigrated to this country about the year 
1824 , and in the Horticultural Nurseries which he esta- 
blished at Brooklyn, he gave a specimen of the natural 
