Dropmore is the seat of Lady Grenville, and has been celebrated, for some time, for its collection of rare trees - especially evergreens. It is in the neighborhood of Windsor, and I passed a morning there with a good deal of interest.

In point of taste and beauty, Dropmore disappointed me. The site is flat, the soil sandy and thin, and the arrangement, in no way remarkable. The mansion is not so fine as some upon the Hudson, and the scenery about it, does not rise above the dead level of an uniformity rendered less insipid by abundant plantations. There is, however, a wilderness of flower-garden about the house, in which I saw scarlet geraniums and garden vases enough to embellish a whole village. The effect, however, was riant and gay without the sentiment of real beauty.

But one does not go to Norway to drink sherbet, and Dropmore is only a show place by virtue of its Pinetum. This is its collection of evergreen trees, and particularly of the pine tribe - every species that will grow in England being collected in this one place.

Of course, in a scientific collection of evergreen trees, there are many that are only curious to the botanist - many that are only valuable for timber, and many that are almost ugly in their growth - or at least present no attractive feature to the general eye: But there are also, in this Pinetum, some evergreens of such rare and wonderful beauty, growing in such exquisite perfection of development, that they effect a tree-lover like those few finest Raphaels and Vandykes in the great galleries, which irradiate whole acres of common art.

The oldest and finest portion of the Pinetum occupies a lawn of several acres near the house, upon which are assembled, like belles at a levee, many of those loveliest of evergreens - the Araucaria or pine of Chili, the Douglass' Fir of California, the Sacred Cedar of India, the Funebral Cypress of Japan and many others.

Perhaps the finest tree in this scene is the Douglass' Fir (Abies Douglassii.) It is sixty-two feet high, and has grown to this altitude in twenty-one years from the seed. It resembles most the Norway Spruce, as one occasionally sees the finest form of that tree, having that graceful downward sweep of the branches and feathering out quite down to the turf - but it is altogether more airy in form and of a richer and dark er green in color. At this size it is the symbol of stately elegance. Here is also a specimen, thirty feet high, of Pinus insignis, the richest and darkest of all pines, as well as Pinus exeelsa, one of the most affectedly pretty evergreens - its silvery leaves resembling those of the white pine, but drooping languidly - and Pinus macrocarpa with longer leaves than those of the Pinaster.

* Taxodium sempervirens is here seventeen feet high - rich dark green in foliage and very ornamental. CrypBut the gem of the collection is the superb Chili Pine or Araucaria - the oldest, I think, in England, or, at all events, the finest. The seed was presented to the late Lord Gren-Rillb by William IVth - who had some of the first gigantic cones of this tree that were imported. This specimen is now 30 feet high, perfectly symmetrical, the stem as straight as a column - the branches disposed with the utmost regularity, and the lower ones drooping and touching the ground like those of a larch. If you will not smile, I will tell you that it struck me that the expression of this tree is heroic - that is, it looks the very Mars of evergreens. There are no slender twigs, no small branches - but a great stem with branches like a colossal bronze candelabrum, or perhaps the whole reminds one more of some gigantic, dark green coral than a living, flexible tree. Yet it is a grand object - in its richest of dark green, its noble aspect and its powerful, defiant attitude. This is quite the best specimen that I have seen, and stands in a light, sandy soil on a gravelly bottom - on which soil I was told, it only grows luxuriantly. I do not know how well this fine evergreen will succeed at home.

It is now on trial - but I would hint to those who may fail from planting it in rich damp soil, that even here, it completely fails in such situations.

After leaving what I should call the Pinetum in full dress - i. e. in the highly kept part of the grounds near the house, you emerge gradually into a tract of many acres of nearly level surface, which reminded me so strongly of a scattered Jersey pine barren, that had it not been for tufts and patches of that charming little plant the heather in full bloom, growing wild on all sides, I might have fended myself in the neighborhood of Amboy. The whole looked, and much of it was, essentially wild, with the exception of carriage-drives and foot-paths running through the mingled copse, heath and woodland. But I was soon convinced of the fact that it was not entirely a wild growth, by being shown, here and there, looking quite as if they had come up by chance, rare specimens of pines, firs, cedars, etc. from all parts of the world, and presently I came upon a noble avenue, half a mile long, of Cedars of Lebanon (a tree to which I always feel inclined to take off my hat as I would to an old cathedral.) The latter have been planted about twenty-five years, and are just beginning to merge the beautiful in the grand.

Everything in the shape of an evergreen seems to thrive in this light sandy soil, and I suggest to the owners of similar waste land in the middle and southern states, to take the hint from this part of Dropmore - plant here and there in the openings the same evergreen trees, protecting them by a slight paling at first, and gradually clearing away all the common growth as they advance into beauty. In this way they may get a wonderfully interesting park - in soil where oaks and elms would never grow - at a very trifling outlay.

I cannot dismiss Dropmore without mentioning a superb hedge of Portugal laurel, thirt -one feet high - and the beautiful "Burnam beeches," almost as fine as one ever sees in America, that I passed on the way back to the rail-way station.