ON WOOD AND PLANTATIONS. 
73 
returns of gratitude, raise a most delightful train of 
sensations in the mind; so innocent and rational, that 
they may justly rank with the most exquisite of human 
enjoyments.” 
“ Happy is he, who in a country life 
Shuns more perplexing toil and jarring strife-, 
Who lives upon the natal soil he loves, 
And sits beneath his old ancestral groves.” 
To this, let us add the complacent feelings with which a 
man in old age may look around him and behold these 
leafy monarchs, planted by his boyish hands and nurtured 
by him in his youthful years, which have grown aged and 
venerable along with him ; 
“ A wood coeval with himself he sees. 
And loves his own contemporary trees.” 
Plantations in the Ancient Style. In the arrange- 
ment and culture of trees and plants in the ancient style 
of Landscape Gardening, we discover the evidences of 
the formal taste, — abounding with every possible variety 
of quaint conceits, and rife with whimsical expedients, 
so much in fashion during the days of Henry and Eliza- 
beth, and until the eighteenth century in England, and 
which is still the reigning mode in Holland, and parts of 
France. In these gardens, nature was tamed and subdued, 
or as some critics will have it, tortured into every shape 
which the ingenuity of the gardener could suggest ; and 
such kinds of vegetation as bore the shears most patiently, 
and when carefully trimmed, assumed gradually the 
appearance of verdant statues, pyramids, crowing cocks, 
and rampant lions, were the especial favorites of the 
gardeners of the old school. 
