Puslapio vaizdai
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they were too large to be moved easily, their use for hedges, and their ready sale for that purpose, is well known; if left longer, they are particularly useful for filling up gaps, where smaller plants would be stifled; and if they remained, they would always make excellent hedge-wood, and answer all the common purposes of underwood. For ornament, exotics of different growths might be added; among which the various species of thorns alone, would furnish a considerable list.

It is not meant that the largest growths should never be planted near each other; some of the most beautiful groups are often formed by such a close junction, but not when they have all been planted at the same time, and drawn up together. A judicious improver will know when, and how to deviate from any method, however generally good.

There are few operations in improvement more pleasant, than that of opening gradually a scene, where the materials are not unfit for use, but only too abundant:

the case is very different where they are absolutely spoiled, as in a thick wood of firs. In that, there is no room for selection; no exercise of the judgment in arranging the groups, masses, or single trees; no power of renewing vegetation by pruning or cutting down; no hope of producing the smallest intricacy or variety. If one bare pole be removed, that behind differs from it so little, that one might exclaim with Macbeth,

Thy air

"Is like the first-a third is like the former-
"Horrible sight!"-

and so they would unvariedly go on,

"Tho' their line

"Stretch'd out to the crack of doom."

In contrasting the character of a close wood of firs only, with that of the mixed evergreen plantation which I have described, I do not think I have at all exaggerated the ugliness, and the incorrigible sameness of the one, and the variety and beauty of which the other is capable. I

mean, however, that variety which arises from the manner in which these evergreens may be disposed, not from the number of distinct species. I have indeed often observed in forests, so many combinations and picturesque effects produced merely by oak, beech, thorns, and hollies, that one could hardly wish for more variety; on the other hand I have no less frequently found the most perfect monotony in point of composition and effect, where there was the greatest variety of trees: it put me in mind of what is mentioned of the more ancient Greek painters; that with only four colours, they did, what in the more degenerate days of the art, could not be performed with all the aid of chemistry.

Variety, of which the true end is to relieve the eye, not to perplex it, does not consist in the diversity of separate objects, but in that of their effects when combined together; in diversity of composition, and of character. Many think, however, they have obtained that grand object, when

they have exhibited in one body all the hard names of the Linnean system*; but when as many different plants as can well be got together, are exhibited in every shrubbery, or in every plantation, the result is a sameness of a different kind, but not less truly a sameness, than would arise from there being no diversity at all; for there is no having variety of character, without a certain distinctness, without certain marked features on which the dwell.

eye can

In forests and woody commons, we sometimes come from a part where hollies had chiefly prevailed, to another where junipers

* In a botanical light, such a collection is extremely curious and entertaining; but it is about as good a specimen of variety in landscape, as a line of Lilly's grammar would be of variety in poetry :

Et postis, vectis, vermis societur et axis.

A collection of hardy exotics may also be considered as a very valuable part of the improver's pallet, and may suggest many new and harmonious combinations of colours; but then he must not call the pallet a picture.

or yews are the principal evergreens; and where, perhaps, there is the same sort of change in the deciduous underwood. This strikes us with a new impression; but mix them equally together in all parts, and diversity becomes a source of monotony.

One great cause of the superior variety and richness of unimproved parks and forests, when compared with lawns and dressed grounds, and of their being so much more admired by painters, is, that the trees and groups are seldom totally alone and unconnected; that they seldom exhibit either of those two principal defects in the composition of landscapes, the opposite extremes of being too crouded, or too scattered: whereas the clump is a most unhappy union of them both; it is scattered in respect to the general compo sition, and close and lumpish when considered by itself.

Single trees, when they stand alone and are round-headed, have some tendency towards the defects of the clump; and it is

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