If any person will take the trouble to compare a piece of water so formed, when complete, with the square or circular sheets or ponds now in vogue among us, he must indeed be little gifted with an appreciation of the beautiful, if he do not at once perceive the surpassing merit of the natural style. In the old method, the banks, level, or rising on all sides, without any or but few surrounding trees, carefully gravelled along the edge of the water, or what is still worse, walled up, slope away in a tame, dull, uninteresting grass field. In the natural method, the outline is varied, sometimes receding from the eye, at others stealing out, and inviting the gaze-the banks here slope off gently with a gravelly beach, and there rise abruptly in different heights, abounding with hollows, projections, and eminences, showing various colored rocks and soils, intermingled with a luxuriant vegetation of all sizes and forms, corresponding to the different situations. Instead of allowing the sun to pour down in one blaze of light, without any objects to soften it with their shade, the thick overhanging groups and masses of trees cast, here and there, deep cool shadows. Stealing through the leaves and branches, the sun-beams quiver and play upon the surface of the flood, and are reflected back in dancing light, while their full glow upon the broader and more open portions of the lake is relieved, and brought into harmony by the cooler and softer tints mirrored in the water from the surrounding hues and tints of banks, rocks, and vegetation.
