sight may be good, from some indifferent, and from others bad; it is therefore necessary to consider how those lines of plantation, which produce a good effect from the house, will appear in perspective from different heights and from different situations, and this question has been determined by various circumstances of the place itself.

This subject was elucidated by as many drawings as there were stations described; but as most of them were taken from the public road between Reading and Wallingford, the effect of these plantations will be seen from thence; and I have availed myself, as much as possible, of those examples which, from their proximity to a public road, are most likely to be generally observed.”

If the more common appearances in nature were objects of our imitation, we should certainly plant the valleys and not the hills, since nature generally adopts this rule in her spontaneous plantations; but it is "la belle nature," or those occasional effects of extraordinary beauty, which nature furnishes as models to the landscape gardener. And although a wood on the summit of a bleak hill may not be so profitable, or grow so fast, as one in the sheltered valley, yet its advantages will be strongly felt on the surrounding soil. The verdure will be improved when defended from winds, and fertilized by the successive fall of leaves, whilst the cattle will more readily frequent the hills when they are sheltered and protected by sufficient screens of plantation. *

In recommending that the hills should be planted, I do not mean that the summits should be covered by a patch or clump; the woods of the valleys should, on the contrary, seem to climb the hills by such connecting lines as may neither appear meagre nor artificial, but, following the natural shapes of the ground, produce an apparent continuity of wood falling down the hills in various directions.

* This remark is verified at ASTON, where it is found that more cattle are fed in the park from the improved quality of the pasture, since the quantity has been reduced by the ample plantations made within the last

ten years.

"Rich the robe,

And ample let it flow, that Nature wears

On her thron'd eminence! where'er she takes
Her horizontal march, pursue her step
With sweeping train of forest; hill to hill
Unite, with prodigality of shade."

MASON.

During the first few years of large plantations in a naked country, the outline, however graceful, will appear hard and artificial; but when the trees begin to require thinning, a few single trees or groups may be brought forward. The precise period at which this may be advisable must depend on the nature of the soil: but so rich is the ground in which plantations were made at ASTON, about ten years since, that this management has already been adopted with effect. Although it will again be repeated in the chapter treating of fences, I must observe in this place, that, instead of protecting large plantations with hedges and ditches, I have generally recommended a temporary fence of posts and rails, or hurdles on the outside, and either advise a hedge of thorns to be planted at eight or ten yards distance from the outline, or rather that the whole plantation be so filled with thorns and spinous plants, that the cattle may not penetrate far when the temporary fences shall be removed, and thus may be formed that beautiful and irregular outline so much admired in the woods and thickets of a forest.

CHAPTER V.

Woods. Whateley's Remarks exemplified at SHARDELOES.-IntricacyVariety-A Drive at BULSTRODE traced, with Reasons for its CourseFurther example from HEATHFIELD PARK-A Belt-On thinning Woods -Leaving Groups-Opening a Lawn in great Woods-Example CASHIOBURY.

"OBSERVATIONS on Modern Gardening," by the late Mr. Whateley, contain some remarks peculiarly applicable to the improvement of woods, and so clearly expressive of my own sentiments, that I beg to introduce the ample quotation inserted in the note, * especially as the annexed drawings [figs. 67 and 68] convey specimens of these rules, which require but little further elucidation.

"The outline of a wood may sometimes be great, and always be beautiful; the first requisite is irregularity. That a mixture of trees and underwood should form a long straight line, can never be natural, and a succession of easy sweeps and gentle rounds, each a portion of a greater or less circle, composing altogether a line literally serpentine, is, if possible, worse: it is but a number of regularities put together in a disorderly manner, and equally distant from the beautiful, both of art and of nature. The true beauty of an outline consists more in breaks, than in sweeps; rather in angles, than rounds; in variety, not in succession.

"The outline of a wood is a continued line, and small variations do not save it from the insipidity of sameness; one deep recess, one bold prominence, has more effect than twenty little irregularities that one divides the line into parts, but no breach is thereby made in its unity; a continuation of wood always remains, the form of it only is altered, and the extent is increased: the eye, which hurries to the extremity of whatever is uniform, delights to trace a varied line through all its intricacies, to pause from stage to stage, and to lengthen the progess.

"The parts must not, however, on that account, be multiplied till they are too minute to be interesting, and so numerous as to create confusion. A few large parts should be strongly distinguished in their forms, their directions, and their situations; each of these may afterwards be decorated with subordinate varieties, and the mere growth of the plants will occasion some irregularity; on many occasions more will not be required.

"Every variety in the outline of a wood must be a prominence or a recess; breadth in either is not so important as length to the one, and depth to the other; if the former ends in an angle, or the latter diminishes to a point, they have more force than a shallow dent or a dwarf excrescence, how wide soever they are greater deviations from the continued line which they are intended to break, and their effect is to enlarge the wood itself.

"An inlet into a wood seems to have been cut, if the opposite points of the entrance tally, and that shew of art depreciates its merit: but a differ

The beech-woods in Buckinghamshire derive more beauty from the unequal and varied surface of the ground, on which they are planted, than from the surface of the woods themselves; because they have generally more the appearance of copses, than of woods: and as few of the trees are suffered to arrive to great size, there is a deficiency of that venerable dignity which a grove always ought to possess.

These woods are evidently considered rather as objects of profit, than of picturesque beauty; and it is a circumstance to be regretted, that pecuniary advantage and ornament are seldom strictly compatible with each other. The underwood cannot be protected from cattle, without fences, and if the fence be a live hedge, the trees lose half their beauty, while they appear confined within the unsightly boundary. To remedy this defect, the quick-fence at SHARDELOES has, in many places, been removed, and a rail placed at a little distance within the wood; but the distance is so small, that the original outline is nearly as distinct as if the fence were still visible, and the regular undulations of those lines give an artificial appearance to the whole scenery.

A painter's landscape depends upon his management of light and shade: if these be too smoothly blended with each other, the picture wants force; if too violently contrasted, it is called hard. The light and shade of natural landscape require no less to be studied than that of painting. The shade of a landscape gardener is wood, and his lights proceed either from a lawn, from water, or from buildings. If, on the lawn, too many single trees be scattered, the effect becomes frittered, broken, and diffuse; on the contrary, if the general surface of the lawn be too naked, and the outline of the woods form an

ence only in the situation of those points, by bringing one more forward than the other, prevents the appearance, though their forms be similar.

"Other points which distinguish the great parts, should, in general, be strongly marked; a short turn has more spirit in it than a tedious circuity; and a line, broken by angles, has a precision and firmness which in an undulated line are wanting: the angles should, indeed, be a little softened; the rotundity of the plant, which forms them, is sometimes sufficient for that purpose; but if they are mellowed down too much they lose all meaning.

"Every variety of outline, hitherto mentioned, may be traced by the underwood alone; but, frequently, the same effects may be produced with more ease, and much more beauty, by a few trees standing out from the thicket, and belonging, or seeming to belong, to the wood, so as to make a part of its figure."

uniform heavy boundary, between the lawn and the horizon, the eye of taste will discover an unpleasing harshness in the composition, which no degree of beauty, either in the shape of the ground, or in the outline of the woods, can entirely counteract. In this state, the natural landscape, like an unfinished picture, will appear to want the last touches of the master this would be remedied on the canvas, in proportion as the picture became more highly finished; but, on the ground, it can only be effected by taking away many trees in the front of the wood, leaving some few individually and more distinctly separated from the rest: this will give the finishing touches to the outline, where no other defect is apparent.

The eye, or rather the mind, is never long delighted with that which it surveys without effort, at a single glance, and therefore sees without exciting curiosity or interest. It is not the vast extent of lawn, the great expanse of water, or the long range of wood, that yields satisfaction; for these, if shapeless, or, which is the same thing, if their exact shape, however large, be too apparent, only attract our notice by the space they occupy, "to fill that space with objects of beauty, to "delight the eye after it has been struck, to fix the attention "where it has been caught, to prolong astonishment into "admiration, are purposes not unworthy of the greatest "designs."

This can only be effected by intricacy, the due medium between uniformity on the one hand, and confusion on the other; which is produced by throwing obstacles in the way to amuse the eye, and to retard that celerity of vision, so natural, where no impediments occur to break the uniformity of objects. Yet while the hasty progress of the eye is checked, it ought not to be arrested too abruptly. The mind requires a continuity, though not a sameness; and, while it is pleased with succession and variety, it is offended by sudden contrast, which destroys the unity of composition.

There is a small clump at b [fig. 67], which is of great use in breaking the outline of the wood beyond it; and there is a dell or scar in the ground at c, that may also be planted for the like purpose. It is a very common expedient to mend an outline, by adding new plantation in the front of an old one: