colonnades; those ranges of aloes and cactuses growing out of vases of granite and of porphyry, scarce more symmetric by art, than these plants are by nature; and, finally, all those other endless contrasts of regular and irregular forms, everywhere, each individually increasing its own charms, through their contrast with those of the other, exhibited in the countries, which we consider as the earliest schools, where beauty became an object of sedulous study. But the truth is, that in our remoter climes, we carry every theory into the extremes. Once, that very symmetry and correspondence of parts of which a certain proportion ever has, to all refined ages and nations, ancient and modern, appeared a requisite feature of the more dressy and finished parts of the pleasure garden, prevailed in all English villas with so little selection, and at the same time, in such indiscreet profusion, as not only rendered the different parts insipid and monotonous with respect to each other, but the whole mass a most formal, unharmonious blotch with regard to the surrounding country. Surfeited at last with symmetry carried to excess, we have suddenly leaped into the other extreme. Dreading the faintest trace of the ancient regularity of outline as much as we dread the phantoms of those we once most loved, we have made our country residences look dropped from the clouds, in spots most unfitted to receive them; and, at the expense, not only of all beauty, but of all comfort, we have made the grounds appear as much out of harmony, viewed in one direction with the mansion, as they formerly were viewed in the opposite direction with the country at large. Through the total exclusion of all the variety, the relief, the sharpness, which, straight or spherical, or angular, or other determinate lines and forms might have given to unsymmetric and serpentining forms and surfaces, we have, without at all diminishing the appearance of art, (which in a garden can never be totally eradicated,) only succeeded in rendering that art of the most tame and monotonous description; like that languid and formal blank verse, which is equally divested of the force of poetry and the facility of prose. Nature, who, in her larger productions, is content with exhibiting the more vague beauties that derive from mere variety and play of hues and forms; Nature herself, in her smaller and more elaborate, and if I may so call them, choicer bits of every different reign, superadds those features of regular symmetry of colors and shapes, which not only form a more striking contrast with the more desultory modifications of her huger masses, but intrinsically in a smaller space, produces a greater effect than the former can display. Examine the radii of the snow-spangle, the facettes of the crystal, the petals of the flower, the capsules of the seed, the wings, the antennæ, the rings, the stigmata of the insect and the butter-fly; nay, even in man and beast,