NOTWITHSTANDING Kent's mistakes, so many country-seats were capable of great improvement by merely clearing away redundant formality, the painter's ideas were not entirely neglected, and, accordingly, "improvement by abstraction," as it has been expressed, became the vogue. A sweeping sentence was soon pronounced against every right line and right angle. The Dutch and Italian designs quickly disappeared. The venerable avenues were uprooted; the airy terrace, with its verdant slopes, were levelled with the general surface of the ground; all the nicely clipped hedges and arcades, the pyramids and globes - all were banished from the lawn and gardens; insulated clumps replaced the hedge-row trees.

The regularity of the old style was recklessly proscribed, to admit the irregularity of the new, and thousands of places were sacrificed. Even Sir Uvedale Price was infected with the mania, and ever after regretted his hasty operations; he admitted that to depart from the old style by introducing the irregularity of the new, was not all that was wanted to give to new scenery a truly natural character.

Correct grouping, it was soon found, was one of the first principles of landscape-gardening. Massive plantings, dissociated from groups of trees and bushes, would appear stiff, heavy, and unnatural, as well as totally devoid of interest to the painter. In associating groups with masses, the best and most natural effect, and that which gives the greatest expression, is generally attained by first placing the largest group or cluster in advance, and pretty near to a projection of the mass, and smaller ones about these. Thus the depth of bay in the mass is augmented, and the projection increased. A few small groups of low-growing trees, placed in the bays at intervals, make the depth more intricate, but care must be taken not to lessen the depth, nor to fill the bay too much. A mass of trees of even half an acre in extent, requires several smaller groups to proceed from it by degrees. A broken, loose appearance, producing effective light and shade, would thus be attained; the mass itself ought not to appear one dense body, but should have its monotony broken by parts being left unplanted.

We shall continue some brief remarks on this topic in a future number. At present, let us turn to our illustrations, and continue our examination of groups. As in the case represented in Figs. 4 and 5, so is the wry group (Fig. 7) highly improved in Fig. 8. Again; the striking transition of character between a spruce or a larch and a round-headed tree (Fig. 10), is improved by making the spiral tree a central object (Fig. 11). An effective and balanced group may be made of seven or eight trees, or more, if two of them be placed only a foot or two apart; a third, three or four feet further off; and the rest at various distances - say from five to thirty feet - the taller ones appearing midway, similar to the two larches represented at Fig. 9; but if one or two tall trees appeared on one side, this balance would be no longer maintained.

A group of Scotch firs, or other pines, spruces, or evergreens, of any kind, having a larch, elm, birch, or some other deciduous tree, on one side, would be objectionable; but place these judiciously inside, and the effect will be good.

* See Frontispiece.

Where two trees only are planted together, they should invariably be of one kind, or so nearly allied to each other as not to appear very different, either in form or color. Nothing, in the association of trees, can be more defective or offensive to the sight than two of decidedly opposite characters. The ramified arms of the sycamore could never be made to blend happily with the delicate birch (Fig. 12), or the round-headed lime with the spruce fir (Fig. 10).