Page:The Bloom of Monticello (1926).pdf/20

 sweet briar, and even hardy flowers, which may not require attention. Keep in it deer, rabbits, peacocks, guinea, poultry, pigeons, etc. Let it be an asylum for hares, squirrels, pheasants, partridges, and every other wild animal (except those of prey). Court them to it by laying food for them in proper places. Procure a buck elk, to be, as it were, monarch of the wood; but keep him shy, that his appearance may not lose its effect by too much familiarity. A buffalo might be confined also. Inscriptions in various places on the bark of the trees or metal plates suited to the character or expresionexpression [sic] of the place.

An arched temple, at the spring on the north side of the park likewise was a part of this dream, inclined against a terraced hill, with water flowing in cascade and entering a cistern beneath the first floor of stone, "the rooms eight feet cube, with a small table and a couple of chairs," and "the roof," he wrote, "may be Chinese, Grecian or in the taste of the Lantern of Demosthenes at Athens." A Latin inscription was suggested.

"The ground just above the spring smoothed and turfed; close to the spring a sleeping figure reclined on a marble slab, surrounded with turf." "Open a vista to the mill pond, river, road," in his fantasy he wrote, as he queried whether a view of the neighboring town would have good effect. "Intersperse in this and every other part of the ground, abundance of jessamine, honeysuckle, sweet briar." Under the temple was to be concealed an Aeolian harp,harp. [sic] Then, as if changing his plan, he added: