572 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
grounds attached to our colleges, hospitals, and other 
public buildings. 
Mr. Downing, we think, did much to develop this in 
the taste he displayed in the arrangement of the grounds 
attached to the Smithsonian Institute and La Fayette 
Square, in Washington. We are rapidly passing from the 
straight, formal walks, and the rectangular plantations 
of the past, into the more harmonious and pleasing 
arrangements of the modern school. Clinton Park and 
Botanic Garden, which contains within its limits Hamil- 
ton College, at Clinton, H. Y., is a very successful illus- 
tration of this improvement. Fifteen or twenty acres 
have been enclosed within the College Park, and en- 
tirely laid out in the most skillful and artistic manner. 
Broad and extensive lawns are divided by graceful 
walks throughout the whole extent ; trees and shrubs, 
of every description flourishing in this climate, have been 
planted in groups, masses, or as single specimens. 
A section of the ground will be used as a Botanic 
Garden, in which trees, shrubs, and flowers will be 
arranged according to their several families. 
The humanizing influence of harmonious and beauti- 
ful surroundings upon every one, is beyond all question ; 
and it was truly said by the Bev. Mr. Gridley, to whose 
taste and energy much of the success of the Clinton 
Park is due, that “ it is no vain thing to suppose that 
the minds and hearts of students will be benefited by 
daily w T alks through such grounds, and in view of such 
a varied and wide-spread landscape : these peaceful 
shades and sunny slopes and laughing streams— this 
hum of cheerful industry — the music of distant church 
bells, and the glimpses and echoes here caught of the 
great thoroughfares of business and travel that mark 
the great w r orld without — these skies, ever changing and 
ever beautiful, and the seasons rolling through them — • 
what mind can be brought into the midst of such scenes 
without deriving from them essential profit ?” 
