in the hands of an expert forester and his assistants. Indeed it has always seemed to us not the least important branch of this great national subject, that the increase and the proper management of our forests cannot but be attended with the most beneficial effect on the population of the country. Where there lies stretched a wide tract of land, affording scanty food for unsheltered flocks, the country will soon, under a judicious system, show the scene most delightful to the eye-an intermixture of pastoral and silvan scenery, where Ceres, without usurping the land, finds also spots fit for cultivation. For even the plough has its office in this species of improvement. In numerous places we are surprised to see the marks of the furrows upon plains, upon bleak hill sides, and in wild moor land. We are not to suppose that, in the infancy of agriculture, our ancestors were able to raise crops of corn where we see only heath and fern. But in former times, and while the hills retained their natural clothing of wood, such spots were sheltered by the adjacent trees, and were thus rendered capable of producing crops. There can be no doubt that, the protection being restored, the power of production would again return, and that in the neighbourhood of the little hamlets required for the occupation of the foresters the means of his simple subsistence would be again produced. The effects of human industry would, as usual, overbalance every disadvantageous consideration, and man would raise food for himself and his domestic animals in the region where his daily labour gained his daily bread. There would thus arise in the wild desert a hardy and moral population, living by the axe and mattock, pursuing their useful occupation in a mode equally favourable to health and morality. The woods, requiring in succession planting, pruning, thinning, felling, and barking, would furnish to such labourers a constant course of employment. They would be naturally attached to the soil on which they dwelt, and the proprietor who afforded them the means of life would be very undeserving if he had not his share of that attachment. In a word, the melancholy maxim of the poet would be confuted, and the race of bold peasantry, whom want and devastation had driven from these vast wilds, would be restored to their native country. This circumstance alone deserves the most profound attention from every class of proprietors; whether the philosophical economist, who looks with anxiety for the mode of occupying and supporting an excess of population, or the juvenile sportsman, who seeks the mode of multiplying his game, and increasing the number of his gardes de chasse. The woods which he plants will serve the first purpose, and, kindly treated, his band of foresters will assist in protecting them. We may be thought to have laboured too long to prove propositions is the object-so comparatively indifferent is the attention of proprietors, that it becomes a duty to the country to omit no opportunity ofrecurring to the subject. The only decent pretext which we hear alleged for resisting a call which is sounded from every quarter, is the selfish excuse, that the profits of plantations make a tardy and distant return. To a person who argues in this manner it is in vain to speak of the future welfare of the country, or of the immediate benefit to the poorer inhabitants, or of the honour justly attached to the memory of an extensive improver, since he must be insensible even to the benefit which his own family must derive from the improvement recommended; we can, notwithstanding, meet him on his own ground, and affirm that the advantage to the proprietor who has planted a hundred acres begins at the very commencement of the undertaking, and may be realized whenever it is the pleasure of the proprietor that such realization shall take place. If, for example, he chooses to sell a plantation at five years old, or at an earlier period, there is little doubt that it will be accounted worth the sum which the plantation cost him, in addition to the value of the land, and also the interest upon the expense so laid out. After this period the value increases in a compound ratio: and at any period when the planter chooses to sell his property, he must and will derive an advantage from his plantations, corresponding to their state of advancement. It is true that the landed proprietor's own interest will teach him not to be too eager in realizing the profits of his plantations, because every year that he retains them adds rapidly to their value. But still the value exists as much as that of the plate in his strong-box, and can be converted as easily into money, should he be disposed to sell the plantations which he has formed. All this is demonstrable even to the prejudices of avarice itself, in its blindest mood; but the indifference to this great rural improvement arises, we have reason to believe, not so much out of the actual lucre of gain as the fatal vis inertia-that indolence which induces the lords of the soil to be satisfied with what they can obtain from it by immediate rent, rather than encounter the expense and trouble of attempting the modes of amelioration which require immediate expense-and, what is, perhaps, more grudged by the first-born of Egypt-a little future attention. To such we can only say, that improvement by plantation is at once the easiest, the cheapest, and the least precarious mode of increasing the immediate value, as well as the future income, of their estates, and that therefore it is we exhort them to take to heart the exhortation of the dying Scotch laird to his son ;-" Be aye sticking in a tree, Jock-it will be growing ARTICLE XV. ON LANDSCAPE GARDENING. The Planter's Guide; or, a Practical Essay on the best Method of giving immediate effect to Wood, by the removal of large trees and Underwood. By SIR HENRY STEUART, Bart. Edinburgh, 8vo, 1828.-Quarterly Review, March, 1828.] THE notable paradox, that the residence of a proprietor upon his estate is of as little consequence as the bodily presence of a stockholder upon Exchange, has, we believe, been renounced. At least, as in the case of the Duchess of Suffolk's relationship to her own child, the vulgar continue to be of opinion that there is some difference in favour of the next hamlet and village, and even of the vicinage in general, when the squire spends his rents at the manorhouse, instead of cutting a figure in France or Italy. A celebrated politician used to say he would willingly bring in one bill to make poaching felony, another to encourage the breed of foxes, and a third to revive the decayed amusements of cock-fighting and bull-baiting -that he would make, in short, any sacrifice to the humours and prejudices of the country gentlemen, in their most extravagant form, providing only he could prevail upon them to "dwell in their own houses, be the patrons of their own tenantry, and the fathers of their own children." However we might be disposed to stop short of these liberal concessions, we agree so far with the senator by whom they were enounced, as to think every thing of great consequence which furnishes an additional source of profit or of pleasure to the resident proprietor, and induces him to continue to support the useful and honourable character of a country gentleman, an epithet so pleasing in English ears, so dear to English feelings of independence and patriotism. The manly lines of Akenside cannot fail to rush on the memory of our readers, nor was there such occasion for the reproach when it flowed from the pen of the author, as there is at this present day. "O blind of choice, and to yourselves untrue! The young grove shoots, their bloom the fields renew, Or tempt the gamester's dark destroying snare, Or at some courtly shrine with slavish incense bend!" 381 dence offers to its proprietor, the improvement of the appearance of the house and adjacent demesne will ever hold a very high place. Field-sports, at an early season in life, have more of immediate excitation; nor are we amongst those who condemn the gallant chase, though we cannot, now-a-days, follow it: but a country life has leisure for both, if pursued, as Lady Grace says, moderately; and we can promise our young sportsman, also, that if he studies the pursuits which this article recommends, he will find them peculiarly combined with the establishment of covers, and the protection of game. Agriculture itself, the most serious occupation of country gentlemen, has points which may be combined with the art we are about to treat of-or, rather, those two pursuits cannot, on many occasions, be kept separate from each other; for we shall have repeated occasion to remark, how much beauty is, in the idea of a spectator, connected with utility, and how much good taste is always offended by obvious and unnecessary expense. These are principles which connect the farm with the pleasure-ground or demesne.— Lastly, we have Pope's celebrated apology for the profuse expense bestowed on the house and grounds of Canons-if Canons, indeed, was meant "Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed; The taste of alterations may be good or bad, but the labour employed upon them must necessarily furnish employment to the most valuable, though often the least considered of the children of the soil,-those, namely, who are engaged in its cultivation. Horace Walpole, in a short essay, distinguished by his usual accuracy of information, and ornamented by his wit and taste, has traced the history of gardening, in a pictural sense, from the mere art of horticulture to the creation of scenery of a more general character, extending beyond the narrow limits of the proper garden and orchard. We venture, however, to think that this history, though combined by a master-hand, is in some degree imperfect, and confounds two particulars which our ancestors kept separate, and treated on principles entirely different-the garden, namely, with its ornaments, and the park, chase, or riding, which, under various names, was the proudest appurtenance of the feudal castle, and marked the existence of those rights and privileges which the feudal lord most valued. The garden, at first intended merely for producing esculent vegetables, fruits, and flowers, began to assume another character, so soon as the increase of civilisation tempted the feudal baron to step a little way out of the limits of his fortifications, and permitted his high As assigned to her by ancient minstrels, and tread with stately pace the neighbouring precincts which art had garnished for her reception. These gardens were defended with walls, as well for safety as for shelter: they were often surrounded with fosses, had the command of water, and gave the disposer of the ground an opportunity to display his taste, by introducing canals, basins, and fountains, the margins of which admitted of the highest architectural ornament. art enlarged its range, and the nobles were satisfied with a display of magnificence, to atone for the abridgment of their power, new ornaments were successively introduced; banqueting houses were built; terraces were extended, and connected by staircases and balustrades of the richest forms. The result was, indeed, in the highest degree artificial, but it was a sight beautiful in itself—a triumph of human art over the elements, and, connected as these ornamented gardens were with splendid mansions, in the same character, there was a symmetry and harmony betwixt the baronial palace itself, and these its natural appendages, which recommended them to the judgment as well as to the eye. The shrubs themselves were artificial, in so far as they were either exotic, or, if indigenous, were treated in a manner, and presented an appearance, which was altogether the work of cultivation. The examination of such objects furnished amusement to the merely curious, information to the scientific, and pleasure, at least, to those who only looked at them, and passed on. Where there was little extent of ground, especially, what could be fitter for the amusement of "learned leisure," than those "trim gardens," which Milton has represented as the chosen scene of the easy and unoccupied man of letters? He had then around him the most delightful subjects of observation, in the fruits and flowers, the shrubs and trees, many of them interesting from their novelty and peculiar appearance and habits, inviting him to such studies as lead from created things up to the Almighty Creator. This sublime author, indeed, has been quoted, as bearing a testimony against the artificial taste of gardening, in the times when he lived, in those well-known Verses: Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art This passage expresses exquisitely what park-scenery ought to be, and what it has, in some cases, actually become; but, we think, the quotation has been used to authorize conclusions which the author never intended. Eden was created by the Almighty fiat, which called heaven and earth into existence, and poets of genius much inferior, |