120 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
“ Jove’s own tree, 
That holds the woods in awful sovereignty 
For length of ages lasts his happy reign. 
And lives of mortal man contend in vain. 
Full in the midst of his own strength he stands, 
Stretching his brawny arms and leafy hands, 
His shade protects the plains, his head the hills commands.” 
Dryden’s Trans. 
“ The oak,” says Gilpin, “ is confessedly the most pictu- 
resque tree in itself, and the most accommodating in com- 
position. It refuses no subject either in natural or in 
artificial landscape. It is suited to the grandest, and may 
with propriety be introduced into the most pastoral. It 
adds new dignity to the ruined tower and the Gothic arch ; 
and by stretching its wild, moss-grown branches athwart 
their ivied walls, it gives them a kind of majesty coeval 
with itself ; at the same time its propriety is still preserved 
if it throws its arms over the purling brook or the mantling 
pool, where it beholds 
“ Its reverend image in the expanse below.” 
Milton introduces it happily even in the lowest scene- 
“ Hard by a cottage chimney smokes. 
From between two aged oaks.” 
The oak is not only one of the grandest and most pictu- 
resque objects as a single tree upon a lawn, but it is equally 
unrivalled for groups and masses. There is a breadth about 
the lights and shadows reflected and embosomed in its 
foliage, a singular freedom and boldness in its outline, and 
a pleasing richness and intricacy in its huge ramification 
of branch and limb, that render it highly adapted to these 
purposes. Some trees, as the willow or the spiry poplar 
