like park
scenery, it is far more owing to the gifts of a bountiful nature than to
any of the suggestions of art. Thanks to the cultivated taste of
Downing, as well as to his well-directed labours, this reproach is
likely to be soon removed, and country life will acquire this pleasure,
among the many others that are so peculiarly its own. After lying for
more than twenty years--a stigma on the national taste--disfigured by
ravines or gullies, and otherwise in a rude and discreditable condition,
the grounds of the White House have been brought into a condition to
denote that they are the property of a civilized country. The Americans
are as apt at imitation as the Chinese, with a far greater disposition
to admit of change; and little beyond good models are required to set
them on the right track. But it is certain that, as a nation, we have
yet to acquire nearly all that belongs to the art I have mentioned that
lies beyond avenues of trees, with an occasional tuft of shrubbery. The
abundance of the latter, that forms the wilderness of sweets, the
_masses_ of flowers that spot the surface of Europe, the beauty of
curved lines, and the whole finesse of surprises, reliefs, back-grounds
and vistas, are things so little known among us as to be almost
"arisdogratic," as my uncle Ro would call the word.

Little else had been done at Ravensnest than to profit by the native
growth of the trees, and to take advantage of the favourable
circumstances in the formation of the grounds. Most travellers imagine
that it might be an easy thing to lay out a park in the virgin forest,
as the axe might spare the thickets, and copses, and woods, that
elsewhere are the fruits of time and planting. This is all a mistake,
however, as the rule; though modified exceptions may and do exist. The
tree of the American forest shoots upward toward the light, growing so
tall and slender as to be unsightly; and even when time has given its
trunk is due size, the top is rarely of a breadth to ornament a park or
a lawn, while its roots, seeking their nourishment in the rich alluvium
formed by the decayed leaves of a thousand years, lie too near the
surface to afford sufficient support after losing the shelter of its
neighbours. It is owing to reasons like these that the ornamental
grounds of an American country-house have usually to be commenced _ab
origine_, and that natural causes so little aid in finishing them.

My predecessors had done a little towards