some rustic temple, or sylvan statue, grown green and dank with
age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion.

These are but a few of the features of park scenery; but what
most delights me, is the creative talent with which the English
decorate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest
habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in
the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise.
With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its
capabilities, and pictures in his mind the future landscape. The
sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand; and yet the
operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be
perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the
cautious pruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers and
plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introduction of a
green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of blue
distance, or silver gleam of water;-all these are managed with a
delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity, like the magic
touchings with which a painter finishes up a favorite picture.

The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country,
has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that
descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched
cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their
embellishment. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before the door,
the little flower-bed bordered with snug box, the woodbine
trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the
lattice; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly, providently
planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and
to throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside;