The most lovely appearances in landscape are caused by the spontaneous growth of miscellaneous trees, some in dense assemblages and some in scattered groups, with here and there a few single trees standing in open space.  Such is the scenery of considerable portions of the Atlantic States, both North and South.  These varied assemblages of wood and shrubbery are the characteristic features of the landscape in the older villages of New England, and indeed of all the States that were established before the Revolution.  But the New-England system of farming—­so much abhorred by those who wish to bring agriculture to such a state of improvement as shall make it profitable exclusively to capitalists—­has been more favorable to the sylvan beauty of the landscape than that of any other part of the continent.  At the South, especially, where agriculture is carried on in large plantations, we see wide fields of tillage, and forest groups of corresponding size.  But the small and independent farming of New England—­as favorable to general happiness as it is to beautiful scenery—­has produced a charming variety of wood, pasture, and tillage, so agreeably intermixed that one is never weary of looking upon it.  The varied surface of the landscape, in the uneven parts which are not mountainous, has increased these advantages, producing an endless multitude of those limited views which may be termed picturesque.

In no other part of the country are the minor inequalities of surface so frequent as in New England:  I allude to that sort of ruggedness which is unfavorable to any “mammoth” system of agriculture, and plainly evinces that Nature and Providence have designed this part of the country for free and independent labor.  Here little meadows, of a few acres in extent, are common, encircled by green pasture hills or by wood.  A rolling surface is more favorable to grandeur of scenery; but nothing is more beautiful than landscape formed by hills rising suddenly out of perfect levels.  As it is not my present purpose to treat of landscape in general, I will simply remark that the barrenness of a great part of the soil of the Eastern States is favorable to picturesque scenery.  This may seem a paradoxical assertion to those who can see no beauty except in universal fatness; but unvaried luxuriance is fatal to variety of scenes, though it undoubtedly encourages the development of individual growth.  An agreeable intermixture of various sylvan assemblages is one of the effects of a barren soil, containing numerous fertile tracts.  Not having in general sufficient strength to produce timber, it covers itself with diverse groups of vegetation, corresponding with the varieties of soil and surface.  Thus, in a certain degree, we are obliged to confess that beauty springs out of Nature’s deficiencies.