(For the Mirror.)
The Alpine Horn is an instrument made of the bark of the cherry-tree, and like a speaking-trumpet, is used to convey sounds to a great distance. When the last rays of the sun gild the summit of the Alps, the shepherd who inhabits the highest peak of those mountains, takes his horn, and cries with a loud voice, “Praised be the Lord.” As soon as the neighbouring shepherds hear him they leave their huts and repeat these words. The sounds are prolonged many minutes, while the echoes of the mountains, and grottoes of the rocks, repeat the name of God. Imagination cannot picture any thing more solemn, or sublime, than this scene. During the silence that succeeds, the shepherds bend their knees, and pray in the open air, and then retire to their huts to rest. The sun-light gilding the tops of those stupendous mountains, upon which the blue vault of heaven seems to rest, the magnificent scenery around, and the voices of the shepherds sounding from rock to rock the praise of the Almighty, must fill the mind of every traveller with enthusiasm and awe.
INA.
SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
ENGLISH GARDENING.
Mr. Corbett has just published a useful little volume, entitled the English Gardener, which is, perhaps, one of the most practical books ever printed. At present we must confine our extracts to a few useful passages; but we purpose a more extended notice of this very interesting volume.
Laying out Gardens.
In the work of laying-out, great care ought to be taken with regard to straightness and distances, and particularly as to the squareness of every part. To make lines perpendicular, and perfectly so, is, indeed, no difficult matter when one knows how to do it; but one must know how to do it, before one can do it at all. If the gardener understand this much of geometry, he will do it without any difficulty; but if he only pretend to understand the matter, and begin to walk backward and forward, stretching out lines and cocking his eye, make no bones with him; send for a bricklayer, and see the stumps driven into the ground yourself. The four outside lines being laid down with perfect truth, it must be a bungling fellow indeed that cannot do the rest; but if they be only a little askew, you have a botch in your eye for the rest of your life, and a botch of your own making too. Gardeners seldom want for confidence in their own abilities; but this affair of raising perpendiculars upon a given line is a thing settled in a moment: you have nothing to do but to say to the gardener, “Come, let us see how you do it.” He has but one way in which he can do it; and, if he do not immediately begin to work in that way, pack him off to get a bricklayer, even a botch in which trade will perform the work to the truth of a hair.