taste to convert them, with slight labor, into the
finest-wooded lawns and forested parks imaginable. No country whatever
produces finer trees than North America. The evergreens of the north
luxuriate in a grandeur scarcely known elsewhere, and shoot their cones
into the sky to an extent that the stripling pines and firs, and larches
of England in vain may strive to imitate. The elm of New England towers
up, and spreads out its sweeping arms with a majesty unwonted in the
ancient parks or forests of Europe; while its maples, and birches, and
beeches, and ashes, and oaks, and the great white-armed buttonwood, make
up a variety of intervening growth, luxuriant in the extreme. Pass on
through the Middle States, and into the far west, and there they still
flourish with additional kinds--the tulip and poplar--the nut-trees,
in all their wide variety, with a host of others equally grand and
imposing, interspersed; and shrub-trees innumerable, are seen every
where as they sweep along your path. Beyond the Alleghanies, and south
of the great lakes, are vast natural parks, many of them enclosed, and
dotted with herds of cattle ranging over them, which will show single
trees, and clumps of forest that William the Conqueror would have given
a whole fiefdom in his Hampshire spoliations to possess; while,
stretching away toward the Gulf of Mexico, new varieties of tree are
found, equally imposing, grand, and beautiful, throughout the whole vast
range, and in almost every locality, susceptible of the finest possible
appropriation to ornament and use. Many a one of these noble forests,
and open, natural parks have been appropriated already to embellish the
comfortable family establishment which has been built either on its
margin, or within it; and thousands more are standing, as yet
unimproved, but equally inviting the future occupant to their ample
protection.

The moral influences, too, of lawns and parks around or in the vicinity
of our dwellings, are worthy of consideration. Secluded as many a
country dweller may be, away from the throng of society, there is a
sympathy in trees which invites our thoughts, and draws our presence
among them with unwonted interest, and in frequent cases, assist
materially in stamping the feelings and courses of our future
lives--always with pure and ennobling sentiments--

"The groves were God's first temples."

The thoughtful man, as he passes under their sheltering boughs, in the
heat of summ