The ruder
nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though
soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no
means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and
smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine
ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral
estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the
park. The sleek and noble air of patrician trees, standing proudly on
the rich velvet sward, the order and grace and beauty of all that meets
the eye, lead us, as I have said already, to form a high opinion of the
owner. In this we may of course be sometimes disappointed; but a man's
character is generally to be traced in almost every object around him
over which he has the power of a proprietor, and in few things are a
man's taste and habits more distinctly marked than in his park and
garden. If we find the owner of a neatly kept garden and an elegant
mansion slovenly, rude and vulgar in appearance and manners, we
inevitably experience that shock of surprize which is excited by every
thing that is incongruous or out of keeping. On the other hand if the
garden be neglected and overgrown with weeds, or if every thing in its
arrangement indicate a want of taste, and a disregard of neatness and
order, we feel no astonishment whatever in discovering that the
proprietor is as negligent of his mind and person as of his shrubberies
and his lawns.
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