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LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
rural taste, as tlie late Mr. Downing exercised at the 
time of his death. 
While, therefore, the excellence of country houses 
has greatly increased, the improvement in country 
places is not so evident. A great many persons are 
either too indolent or too busy to give much attention 
to the capabilities or wants of their places. The former 
fall easily into the hands of an inferior class of nursery- 
men, or job-planters, and become a ready prey to the ** 
most tastless imposition, while the latter crowd into a 
few hours a day the arrangement and adornment of 
grounds which should require many months of thought 
and study. 
We Americans are, as a general rule, in too great 
a hurry “to get through.” We are apt to allow our- 
selves to go into the country without quite understand- 
ing what we are to do there, or how we are to live, or 
whether we have true taste and capacity for country 
life. Most persons are satisfied while building their 
house and attempting to arrange their grounds. The 
first is comparatively easy, for we have only to com- 
municate to an architect our general wishes, and it be- 
comes his duty to carry them out ; the second is more 
perplexing, simply because we do not know what w r e 
want, or we want to have everything we have seen 
that has struck us as desirable. We do not stop to 
consider whether a certain style of planting or selection 
of trees, harmonizes either with our house or is in 
character with our grounds. We have an indefinite 
idea of the pleasure certain effects gave us in other coun- 
try places, and we are determined to have those effects 
in our own, without any reference to propriety or good 
taste, not from obstinacy, but from ignorance. We have, 
to be sure, certain rules for planting, but the lazy are 
too indolent, and the busy are too hurried to read or 
study them. The suggestions of others are readily taken, 
and the most incongruous and imperfect results necessar- 
