GROVES.
When was the practice of planting groves, or avenues of trees, as approaches to family mansions, commenced, and when and why abandoned? Nothing can speak more of grandeur or of ancestral dignity than these solemn avenues of trees—for instance, those of Spetchley, Cotheridge, &c. In Rome, no great house was formerly built without an avenue of trees, and Plato taught his scholars to love the groves of Academus almost as well as his philosophy.