Spent a great share of his leisure time in planting

Spent a great share of his leisure time in planting

Spent a great share of his leisure time in planting

Walter Scott, whose deep love of park and forest scenery has stamped with his masterly descriptions, his native land as the home of all things beautiful and useful in trees and plantations, spent a great share of his leisure time in planting, and has written a most instructive essay on its practice and benefits. He puts into the mouth of "the Laird of Dumbiedikes," the advice, "Be aye sticking in a tree, Jock; it will be growing while you are sleeping." But Walter Scott had no American soil to plant his trees upon; nor do the grandest forest parks of Scotland show a tithe of the luxuriance and majesty of our American forests. Could he but have seen the variety, the symmetry, and the vast size of our oaks, and elms, and evergreens, a new element of descriptive power would have grown out of the admiration they had created within him; and he would have envied a people the possession of such exhaustless resources as we enjoy, to embellish their homes in the best imaginable manner, with such enduring monuments of grace and beauty.