SUBURBAN GARDENS. 
The increase of suburban erections within the last few years 
has so greatly extended the particular style of gardening included 
in the same term, as to raise it to a consequence its otherwise 
limited capacities would have precluded, and regarding it now as 
the means by which sensations the most pleasurable are conveyed, 
in the air of comfort and adornment made to surround the houses 
of the most numerous and influential class of our fellow-country¬ 
men, there can be no error in assigning to it an importance at 
least equal to that attaching to any other department of the fine 
arts. The fairest proportions of the architect may in vain display 
the most elaborate completeness, the most lavish expenditure of 
money and skill will fail to please, till the productions of nature 
are brought to soften down the asperities, and as it were clothe 
the erections of art. It matters not what the size or pretensions 
of any residence may be, or hardly what its situation, the eye of 
taste wanders unsatisfied till the harmonizing effect of vegetation 
relieves the unpleasant feeling of vacuity or want of finish, and 
the anomaly of a house in the country without a garden is re¬ 
moved. 
A garden contributing so much to the combined effect, it 
follows that through it we may heighten or mar much of the 
beauties of the entire scene, and this introduces the necessity of 
some principle on which we may safely proceed, without incurring 
the danger of finding at the close of our labours that the general 
object we desired is lost. Gardens of the class we are speaking 
of are usually of limited extent, generally in form a parallelogram, 
and often of disproportionate length to the lateral extension, the 
“ frontage ’ 5 being the most valuable portion of the ground. What 
to do with such a plot is often a matter of most perplexing 
difficulty ; each time it is looked at, the interminable and obtrusive 
right lines drawn by the boundary walls or fences seem to be 
III. 1 
