. Recollections of a lifetime : or men and things I have seen : in a series of familiar letters to a friend : historical, biographical, anecdotical, and descriptive . we say,stuhhed form and character. The oaks, the elms, thewalnuts, beeches, are shorter and thicker, as well inthe trunks as the branches, than ours. They haveall a stocky, John Bull form and stature. The leavesare thicker, the twigs larger in circumference. I havenoticed particularly the recent growths of apple-trees,and they are at once shorter and stouter than inAmerica. This quality in the trees gives a pecu-liarity to the la
. Recollections of a lifetime : or men and things I have seen : in a series of familiar letters to a friend : historical, biographical, anecdotical, and descriptive . we say,stuhhed form and character. The oaks, the elms, thewalnuts, beeches, are shorter and thicker, as well inthe trunks as the branches, than ours. They haveall a stocky, John Bull form and stature. The leavesare thicker, the twigs larger in circumference. I havenoticed particularly the recent growths of apple-trees,and they are at once shorter and stouter than inAmerica. This quality in the trees gives a pecu-liarity to the landscape. The forest is more solid andless graceful than ours. If you will look at an Eng-lish painting of trees, you notice the fict I state, andperceive the effect it gives, especially to scenes ofwhich trees constitute a prevailing element. All|over Europe, in fact, the leaves of the trees havea less feathery appearance than in America; and ingeneral the forms of the branches are less arching,and, of course, less beautiful. Hence it will be per-ceived that European pictures of trees differ in thisrespect from American ones—the foliage in the for- ^^^^^Mkl. Scene in England. Vol. 2, p 214 HISTORICAL, ANECDOTICAL, ETC. 215 nicr being more solid, and the sweep of the branchesmore angular. But it is in respect to the effects of human art andindustry, that the English landscape has the chief ad-vantage over ours. England is an old country, andshows on its face the transforming influences of fif-teen centuries of cultivation. It is, with the excep-tion of Belgium, the most thickly-settled country ofEurope—nearly three hundred and fifty inhabitantsto the square mile, while in the United States wehave but seven. Massachusetts, the most thickly-settled State in America, has but one hundred andthirty. England, therefore, is under a garden-like cultiva-tion ; the plowing is straight and even, as if regulatedby machinery; the boundaries of estates consist forthe most part of stone ma
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