"Consult the genius of the place" before you determine upon your design, is sound advice; for in gardening,as in all the fine arts, nothing is pleasing that is inappropriate. Mr. Whateley, our best authority on such subjects, truly says, -

"A plain simple field, unadorned but with the common rural appendages, is an agreeable opening; but if it is extremely small, neithera haystack, nor a cottage, nor a stile, nor a path, nor much less all of them together, will give it an air of reality. A harbour, on an artificial lake, is but a conceit; it raises no idea of refuge or security, for the lake does not suggest an idea of danger: it is detached from the large body of water, and yet is in itself but a poor inconsiderable basin, vainly affecting to mimic the majesty of the sea.

"When imitative characters in gardening are egregiously defective in any material circumstance, the truth of the others exposes and aggravates the failure. But the art of gardening aspires to more than imitation; it can create original characters, and give expressions to the several scenes superior to any they can receive from illusions. Certain properties, and certain dispositions of the objects of nature, are adapted to excite particular ideas and sensations. Many of them have been occasionally mentioned, and all are very well known: they require no discernment, examination, or discussion, but are obvious at a glance, and instantaneously distinguished by our feelings. Beauty alone is not so engaging as this species of character; the impressions it makes are more transient and less interesting; for it aims only at delighting the eye, but the other affects our sensibility. An assemblage of the most elegant forms, in the happiest situations, is to a degree indiscriminate, if they have not been selected and arranged with a design to produce certain expressions; an air of magnificence or of simplicity, of cheerfulness, tranquillity, or some other general character, ought to pervade the whole; and objects pleasing in themselves, if they contradict that character, should therefore be excluded.

Those which are only indifferent must sometimes make room for such as are more significant - may occasionally be recommended by it. Barrenness itself may be an acceptable circumstance in a spot dedicated to solitude and melancholy.

"The power of such characters is rot confined to the ideas which the objects immediately suggest; for these are connected with others which insensibly lead to subjects far distant perhaps from the original thought, and related to it only by a similitude in the sensations they excite. In a prospect enriched and enlivened with inhabitants and cultivation, the attention is caught at first by the circumstances which are gayest in their season - the bloom of an orchard, the festivity of a hay-field, and the carols of harvest-home; but the cheerfulness which these infuse into the mind expands afterwards to other objects than those immediately presented to the eye; and we are thereby disposed to receive, and delighted to pursue, a variety of pleasing ideas, and every benevolent feeling. At the sight of a ruin, reflections on the change, the decay, and the desolation before us naturally occur; and they introduce a long succession of others, all tinctured with that melancholy which these have inspired. Or, if the ■♦-------monument revives the memory of former times, we do not stop at the simple fact which it records, but recollect many more coeval circumstances, which we see, not perhaps as they were, but as they have come down to us - venerable with age, and magnified by fame.

Even without the assistance of buildings, or other adventitious circumstances, nature alone furnishes materials for scenes which may be adapted to almost every kind of expression; their operation is general, and their consequences infinite. The mind is elevated, depressed, or composed, as gaiety, gloom, or tranquillity prevail in the scene; and we soon lose sight of the means by which the character is formed. We forget the particular objects it presents; and giving way to their effects without recurring to the cause, we follow the track they have begun to any extent which the disposition they accord with will allow." - Whateley.