The seat of the Wadsworth family, at Geneseo, is the finest in the interior of the state of New York. Nothing, indeed, can well be more magnificent than the meadow park at Geneseo. It is more than a thousand acres in extent, lying on each side of the Genesee river, and is filled with thousands of the noblest oaks and elms, many of which, but more especially the oaks, are such trees as we see in the pictures of Claude, or our own Durand; richly developed, their trunks and branches grand and majestic, their heads full of breadth and grandeur of outline. (See Fig. 9.) These oaks, distributed over a nearly level surface, with the trees disposed either singly or in the finest groups, as if most tastefully planted centuries ago, are solely the work of nature; and yet so entirely is the whole like the grandest planted park, that it is difficult to believe that all is not the work of some master of art, and intended for the accompaniment of a magnificent residence. Some of the trees are five or six hundred years old.
[James and William Wadsworth settled in the Geneseo Valley in 1790]
