From the author's every-day intercourse with gentlemen who are either laying out new grounds, or are seeking to amend errors in design form.er1y committed, he is also enabled to perceive that sound and useful information is greatly wanted on the subject of landscape-gardening, and that to this defect is mainly attributable the deformities so lamentably frequent. He feels certain, moreover, that other landscape-gardeners will bear him out in the assertion, that their services are more employed to remedy irregularities which have been fallen into for want of due consideration and enlightenment, than to furnish entirely new designs. And the difficulty and expense of rectifying such errors can scarcely be over-estimated. It is wisely ordained that, while a. truly beautiful object will yield permanent and increasing delight, everything of a contrary nature is nearly sure, at some period or other, to pall and disgust the mind.
As far as the writer' d own observation has extended,-and he has reason to believe that is a fair criterion of the real facts of the case,-there is no want of appreciation, among the classes for whom this work is intended, of what is tasteful and elegant in gardening. Most persons are able to admire a. chaste and beautiful garden, when they see it. what is rather required is something or someone to develop and guide their tastes, and direct them to fitting objects.
On all these accounts, then, and ns a humble but earnest effort to supply these demands, the hook now submitted has been written. It is clearly required by the multitude for how few there are among the middle classes who do not possess a small garden. And the very extreme of smallness will not exclude a place from the beneficent influence of art ; which is, perhaps, all the more necessary and powerful in proportion as the limits become more contracted. Still, a garden varying in extent from a quarter of an acre to four or five acres, and either wholly without an accompanying field, or having one that comprises from one to twenty-five acres, is what has been chiefly kept in view.