We must be permitted to quote, in further proof of English taste and habits, and their results in their country residences, the testimony of our countryman, Washington Irving, in one of his most elegant essays. "The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is called Landscape Gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied nature intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which in other countries she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled around the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them like witchery about their rural abodes. Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees heaping up rich piles of foliage. The solemn group of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them; the hare bounding away to the covert, or the pheasant bursting suddenly upon the wing. The brook, taught to wind in natural meanderings, or to expand into a glassy lake,-the sequestered pool reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping upon its bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters; while some rustic temple or sylvan statue, grown green and dark with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion."
