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primitive arrangement of the earth's surface adapted to his blissful
estate, as not existent but designed. The disturbances were the
preparations for his subsequently conceived deathful condition.
"Now," said my friend, "what we regard as exaltation of the landscape
may be really such, as respects only the moral or human point of view.
Each alteration of the natural scenery may possibly effect a blemish
in the picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at large--in
mass--from some point distant from the earth's surface, although not
beyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily understood that what
might improve a closely scrutinized detail, may at the same time injure
a general or more distantly observed effect. There may be a class of
beings, human once, but now invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar,
our disorder may seem order--our unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a
word, the earth-angels, for whose scrutiny more especially than our own,
and for whose death--refined appreciation of the beautiful, may have
been set in array by God the wide landscape-gardens of the hemispheres."
In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a
writer on landscape-gardening who has been supposed to have well treated
his theme:
"
There are properly but two styles of landscape-gardening, the natural
and the artificial. One seeks to recall the original beauty of the
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