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space behind them, and that space, seen between their stems, they in return throw into an agreeable perspective. An inferior grace of the same kind may be often introduced, only by distinguishing the boles of some trees in the wood itself, and keeping down the thicket beneath them. Where even this cannot be well executed, still the outline may be filled with such trees and shrubs as swell out in the middle or their growth and diminish at both ends; or with such as rise in a slender cone; with those whose branches tend upwards; or whose base is very shall in proportion to their height; or which are very thin of boughs and of leaves. În a confined garden scene, which wants room for the effect of detached trees, the outline will be heavy, if these little attentions are disregarded.

XX. The prevailing character of a wood is generally grandeur; the principal attention t erefore which it requir s, is to prevent the excess of that character, to diversify the unifor.ity of its extent, to lighten the unwieldiness of its bulk, and to blend graces with greatness. But the character of a grove is beauty; fine trees are lovely objects; a grove is an assemblage of them; in which every individual retains much of its own peculiar elegance; end whatever it loses, is transferred to the superior beauty of the whole. To a grove, therefore, which alits of endless variety in the disposition of the trees, differences in their shapes and their greens are seldom very important, and sometimes they are detrimental. Strong contrasts scatter trees which are thinly planted and which have not the connexion of underwood; they no longer form one plantation; they are a number of single trees. a thick grove is not indeed exposed to this mischief, and certain situations may recomend different shapes and different greens for their effects upon the surface; but in the outline they are seldom much regarded. The eye attracted into the depth of the grove, passes by little circumstances at the entranee; even varieties in the form of the line do not always engage the attention; they are not so apparant as in a continued thicket, and are scarcely seen, if they are not considerable.

XXI. But the surface and the outline are not the only circumstances to be attended to. Though a grove be beautiful as an object, it is besiles delightful as a spot to walk or to fit in; and the choice and the disposition of the trees for effects within, are therefore a principal consideration. Lere irregularity alone will not please; strict order is there more agreeable than absolute confusion; and some meaning better than none. A regular plantation has a degree of beauty; but it gives no satisfaction, because we know that the same number of trees might be more beautifully arranged. A disposition, however, in which the lines only are broken, without varying the distances, is less natural than any; for though we cannot find strait lines in a forest, we are habituated to them in the hedge-rows of fields; but neither in wild nor in cultivated nature do we ever see trees equidistant from each other: that regularity belon s to art alone. The distances therefore should be strikingly different: the trees should rather into roupes, or stand in various irregular lines, and describe several figures: the intervals between them should be contrasted both in shape and in dimensions: a large space should in some places be quite open; in others the trees should be so close together, as hardly to leave a passage between them; and in others as far apart as the connexion will allow. In the forms and the varieties of these groupes, these lines, and these openings, principally consists the interior beauty of a grove.

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