attained great size, and the orchard was filled with fruit-trees of the best description. There were seats and trellis-walks, and a banqueting-house. Even in our time this little scene, intended to present a formal exhibition of vegetable beauty, was going fast to decay. The parterres of flowers were no longer watched by the quiet and simple friends under whose auspices they had been planted, and much of the ornament of the domain had been neglected or destroyed to increase its productive value. We visited it lately, after an absence of many years. Its air of retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded, was entirely gone; the huge platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning of this century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up, and the whole character of the place so much destroyed, that we were glad when we could leave it. This was the progress of innovation, perhaps of improvement: yet, for the sake of that one garden, as a place of impressive and solemn retreat, we are inclined to enter a protest against the hasty and ill-considered destruction of things which, once destroyed, cannot be restored.

We may here also notice a small place, called Barncluth, in Lanarkshire, standing on the verge of the ridgy bank which views the junction of the Evan with the Clyde. Nothing can be more romantic than the scene around: the river sweeps over a dark rugged bed of stone, overhung with trees and bushes; the ruins of the original castle of the noble family of Hamilton frown over the

precipice; the oaks which crown the banks beyond those grey towers are relics of the ancient Caledonian forest, and at least a thousand years old. It might be thought that the house and garden of Barncluth, with its walks of velvet turf and its verdant alleys of yew and holly, would seem incongruous among natural scenes as magnificent as those we have described. But the effect generally produced is exactly the contrary. The place is so small, that its decorations, while they form, from their antique appearance, a singular foreground, cannot compete with, far less subdue the solemn grandeur of the view which you look down upon; and thus give the spectator the idea of a hermitage constructed in the midst of the wilderness.

Those who choose to prosecute this subject farther, will find in Sir U. Price's book his regret for the destruction of a garden on the old system, described in a tone of exquisite feeling, which leads that distinguished author to declare in favour of many parts of the old school of gardening, and to argue for the preservation of the few remains of ancient magnificence that still exist, by awakening the owner to a sense of their beauties.

It were indeed high time that some one should interfere. The garden, artificial in its structure, its shelter, its climate, and its soil, which every consideration of taste, beauty, and convenience recommended to be kept near to the mansion, and maintained, as its appendage, in the highest state of ornamental decoration which could be used with reference to the character of the house itself, has,

by a strange and sweeping sentence of exile, been condemned to wear the coarsest and most humbling form. Reduced to a clumsy oblong, enclosed within four rough-built walls, and sequestered in some distant corner where it may be best concealed from the eye to which it has been rendered a nuisance, the modern garden resembles nothing so much as a convict in his gaol apparel, banished, by his very appearance, from all decent society. If the peculiarity of the proprietor's taste inclines him to the worship of Flora or Pomona, he must attend their rites in distance and secresy, as if he were practising some abhorred mysteries, instead of rendering an homage which is so peculiarly united with that of the household gods.1

Such being the great change in this department of rural economy, let us next look at that which has taken place in another no less essential part of it. The passionate fondness of our ancestors for the chase is often manifested in their choice of a residence. In an ancient inscription on the house of Wharncliffe, we are informed that the lodge was built in Henry VIII.'s time, by one gentle knight, Sir Thomas Wortley, that he might hear the buck bell in the summer season—a simple record, which speaks much to the imagination. The space of ground set apart for a park of deer must, to answer its purpose, possess the picturesque qualities which afford the greatest scope for the artist: there ought

The present Duke of Marlborough has all but violated this law, much to the honour of his taste, at White-Knights; and more recently, we hear, at Blenheim.

to be a variety of broken ground, of copse-wood, and of growing timber-of land, and of water. The soil and herbage must be left in its natural state; the long fern, amongst which the fawns delight to repose, must not be destroyed. In short, the stag, by nature one of the freest denizens of the forest, can only be kept under even comparative restraint, by taking care that all around him intimates a complete state of forest and wilderness. But the character of abode which is required by these noble animals of the chase is precisely the same which, from its beautiful effects of light and shadow, from its lonely and sequestered character, from the variety and intricacy of its glades, from the numerous and delightful details which it affords on every point, makes the strongest and most pleasing impression on all who are alive to natural beauty. The ancient English poets, Chaucer and Spenser in particular, never luxuriate more than when they get into a forest: by the accuracy with which they describe particular trees, and from their noticing the different characters of the different species, and the various effects of light and darkness upon the walks and glades of the forest, it is evident that they regarded woodland scenery not merely as associated with their favourite sports, but as having in itself beauties which they could appreciate, though their age was not possessed of the fascinating art of committing them to canvass. Even the common people, as we noticed in a former Article, seldom mention "the good forest,” and "the merry green-wood," without some expres

sion of fondness, arising, doubtless, from the pleasure they took in the scenes themselves, as well as in the pastimes which they afforded.

We are not, however, to suppose, that the old feudal barons made ornamental scenery any part of their study. When planting their parks, or when cutting paths and glades through them, their attention was probably entirely occupied with the protection of the deer and convenience of the huntsman. Long avenues were particularly necessary for those large parties, resembling our modern battues, where the honoured guests being stationed in fit standings, had an opportunity of displaying their skill in venery, by selecting the buck which was in season, and their dexterity at bringing him down with the cross-bow or long-bow; and hence all the great forests were pierced by these long rectilinear alleys which appear in old prints, and are mentioned in old books. The following description of Chantilly, by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, though the scene is in France, and on a scale of unusual grandeur and extent, is no bad picture of the domains by which the feudal nobility surrounded their castles and manor-houses, and of the dignified character of the mansions themselves.

"A little river, descending from some higher grounds, in a country which was almost all his (the Constable de Montmorency's) own, and falling at last upon a rock in the middle of a valley, which, to keep drawing forwards, it must on one or other side thereof have declined-some of the ancestors of the Montmorencys, to ease the river of this labour, made clear channels through this rock, to give it a free passage, dividing the rock by this means into little islands, upon which he built a great strong