University of Virginia Library

A home! A home in the country! and a home made beautiful by taste! Here
are three ideas which invest with a triple charm the subject of this exquisite
volume. We know of nothing which indicates a more healthy progress among
our countrymen than the growing taste for such homes. The American people
are quick to follow a fashion, and it is getting to be the fashion to have a place
in the country, and to beautify it; and this is at once fed and guided by such
books as this, which lay down the just principles of landscape gardening; and
teach all how to use the means at their disposal. This book is prepared with
careful judgment. It includes many plans, and furnishes minute instruction
for the laying out of grounds and the planting of trees. We have found very
great pleasure in a first inspection, and doubt not that when another summer
returns, we shall find the book as practically useful, as it is beautiful to the eye
and exciting to the imagination.

We have from Orange Judd & Co. a magnificent manual, entitled Beautifying
Country Homes; a Hand-Book of Landscape Gardening. It is a brief
treatise on landscape gardening and architecture, explaining the principles of
beauty which apply to it, and making just those practical suggestions of which
every builder and owner of a little land, who desires to make the most of it in
the way of convenience and taste, stands in need, in regard to lawns, drainage,
roads, drives, walks, grading, fences, hedges, trees—their selection and their
grouping—flowers, water, ornamentation, rock-work, tools, and general improvements.
The chapter on “improving new places economically” would be
worth much more than the cost of the book ten times over to many persons.
The whole is illustrated, not only by little sketches, but by a series of full-page
lithographs of places which have been actually treated in accordance with the
principles laid down, with lists of trees and shrubs, and other useful suggestions.
We have never met with any thing—and we have given a good deal of
attention to the subject, and bought a great many books upon it—which seemed
to us so helpful and, in general, so trustworthy as this treatise, which we
heartily commend. We omitted to say that it has been done by Mr. J. Weidenmann,
Superintendent of the City Park, and of Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford,
Conn.