" Meyer, a
German, a scientific practical gardener, who was also a writer on
gardening, and had studied his art in the Royal Gardens at Paris, and
afterwards visited England, was a great admirer of English Gardens, but
despaired of introducing our style of gardening into Germany, _chiefly
on account of its inferior turf for lawns_. "Lawns and gravel walks,"
says a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, "are the pride of English
Gardens," "The smoothness and verdure of our lawns," continues the same
writer, "is the first thing in our gardens that catches the eye of a
foreigner; the next is the fineness and firmness of our gravel walks."
Mr. Charles Mackintosh makes the same observation. "In no other country
in the world," he says, "do such things exist." Mrs. Stowe, whose _Uncle
Tom_ has done such service to the cause of liberty in America, on her
visit to England seems to have been quite as much enchanted with our
scenery, as was her countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick. I am pleased to find
Mrs. Stowe recognize the superiority of English landscape-gardening and
of our English verdure. She speaks of, "the princely art of
landscape-gardening, for which England is so famous," and of "_vistas of
verdure and wide sweeps of grass, short, thick, and vividly green_ as the
velvet moss sometimes seen growing on rocks in new England." "Grass," she
observes, "is an art and a science in England--it is an institution.
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