154 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
to the public two or three days every week. Car- 
riages enter from the village of Biltmore, which 
was so named by Mr. Vanderbilt at the time of the 
purchase of the estate. 
The merely curiousvisitormay not divine the real 
charm of the place, may even be disappointed at the 
lack of display there, to him a large part of the 
carefully planned grounds seeming in no way differ- 
ent from the rest of the country, excepting the roads, 
which are perfect. But let the nature-lover or the 
poet in any other form enter these roads winding 
through the apparently untouched forest, and he will 
feel something that he does not feel in the wilderness, 
something that moves him as a great picture moves 
a sensitive spirit, and for the same reason. Back of 
the painted picture throbs the universal soul of man, 
and in the work of the great landscape artist is felt 
the aspiration of the human heart. For these grounds 
were planned and to an extent perfected in detail by 
America's greatest landscape gardener, whose work 
in our public parks is a source of national pride. 
Just why his surroundings produce so pleasing an 
effect upon him, the visitor to Biltmore may not 
know, but if he is an artist he will know, and if he is 
somewhat acquainted with plant life he will soon 
add, to the general impression of beauty, another 
in which his pleasure is increased by discovering, 
among the apparently wild and untrained growths 
along the roadside, a tree, a bush, or a plant that 
blends with the rest, enhancing the effect, but which 
is not a native of the mountains. Perhaps among 
