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The most popular
sites, those usually chosen by inexperienced proprietors in the
middle States, are the summits of hills of moderate elevation,
overlooking extensive prospects. Now there are some advantages,
but also very great disadvantages, in these high positions. The
prominent advantages which such sites are supposed to possess
are wide prospects, and consciousness for the dwelling itself:
to see, and to be seen, to the greatest possible advantage. But
every one having a cultivated taste for fine landscapes, must
greatly prefer agreeable views, vistas of portions of trees with
rich foreground, to wide panoramas of country. It is, in fact,
the difference between a pictured landscape, and a geographical
map. The panorama is striking and interesting, when seen
occasionally, but it wants the interest, the home-like feeling
of appropriation - which a view of moderate extent affords. As
regards the ambition which is gratified with placing one’s
house where it may be a landmark for ten miles round, it is a
false ambition which we have no sympathy with - a taste not in
keeping with our social habits, and foreign to that equality of
condition which all Americans are impatient of seeing greatly
violated.
There are
practical objections to sites upon the tops of hills, or high
ridges, which are of great moment. The first of these is the
great difficulty of raising all kinds of trees and shrubs in
high and exposed sites. There are, apparently, but few persons
aware that ornamental trees will advance twice as rapidly, the
soil being the same, in a midway level, or a valley, as they
will upon the summits of hills or high ridges. This is partly
owing to the high winds, to which they are constantly exposed,
and which render the annual growth of wood comparatively
dwarfish, and partly to the greater dryness of the soil, which,
in this climate, does not afford a continued supply of moisture
to the roots.
But we may also add, as an offset
to the grand prospect which these elevated sites afford, the
labor of walking, riding, or driving up and down a long hill. If
the road can be made gradual and easy this is not much, but in
situations that we could name, where this is by no means the
case, the daily effort (for there is no escape from it), of
dragging up and down hill, becomes a burden, to be relieved of
which, the proprietor would gladly exchange his wide-spread view
for a more limited landscape, and an easier approach.
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