74 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
It has been remarked, that the geometric style would 
always be preferred in a new country, or in any country 
where the amount of land under cultivation is much less 
than that covered with natural woods and forests ; as the 
inhabitants being surrounded by scenery abounding with 
natural beauty, would always incline to lay out their gar- 
dens and pleasure-grounds in regular forms, because the 
distinct exhibition of art would give more pleasure by con- 
trast, than the elegant imitation of beautiful nature. That 
this is true as regards the mass of uncultivated minds, we 
do not deny. But at the same time we affirm that it 
evinces a meagre taste, and a lower state of the art, or a 
lower perception of beauty in the individual who employs 
the geometrical style in such cases. A person, whose 
place is sunounded by inimitably grand or sublime scenery, 
would undoubtedly fail to excite our admiration, by at- 
tempting a fac-simile imitation of such scenery on the small 
scale of a park or garden ; but he is not, therefore, obliged 
to resort to right-lined plantations and regular grass plots, 
to produce something which shall be at once sufficiently 
different to attract notice, and so beautiful as to command 
admiration. All that it would be requisite for him to do 
in such a case, would be to employ rare and foreign orna- 
mental trees ; as for example, the horse-chestnut and the 
linden, in situations where the maple and the sycamore are 
the principal trees, — elegant flowering shrubs and beautiful 
creepers, instead of sumacs and hazels, — and to have his 
place kept in high and polished order, instead of the tan- 
gled wildness of general nature. 
On the contrary, were a person to desire a residence 
newly laid out and planted, in a district where all around 
is in a high state of polished cultivation, as in the suburbs 
