14 ARRANGEMENT OF GARDENS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS 



of England. He concludes, and, I venture to say, on very good 

 grounds, in favour of the Gothic style ; restricting, however, its 

 use mainly to the external appearance of the building ; and, as 

 to internal arrangements, retaining its peculiarities only when 

 designing the hall, chapel, and galleries. It is obvious that the 

 same preference, limited by the same restrictions, should be 

 assigned on the same grounds to the Elizabethan over the Gre- 

 cian. But what is the main principle here involved and success- 

 fully vindicated ? The principle, that the style of the house is 

 to be made in harmony (as near as possible) with the character 

 of the scenery, and not the scenery to be changed, as a supposed 

 matter of consequence, so as to be in harmony with the style of 

 the house. I repeat, that I do not know of such a connexion ever 

 having existed artistically — I mean, that I never yet heard of the 

 Doric style of landscape-gardening, or the Tuscan, or the Corinth- 

 ian, or the Gothic, or the Saxon, or the Norman, as necessarily 

 bound up with the corresponding styles in architecture. All 

 that is contended for is, that the character of the scenery around 

 shall be paramount in deciding the style of the building which 

 it surrounds. And if this be true in principle, it is equally so in 

 degree. I am aware that there are many subordinate points of 

 considerable importance to be kept in view ; but these do not 

 affect the general truth either in principle or in degree. And 

 that principle is true not only of the wide range of scenery that 

 you view from every side of the mansion, but of every inch of 

 ground, even to the foot of its walls. As the eye falls nearer 

 home, the beauties must be more and more concentrated ; but 

 still the system must not be all straight lines, and angles, and 

 mathematical forms ; it must not be strait-laced into an un- 

 healthy uniformity or a diseased regularity; it must bring together, 

 even within the narrowest and most confined view, a combination 

 of the fairest beauties of nature and the most graceful efforts of 

 art. Take the opposite opinion as just. Assert that you must 

 attach an Elizabethan garden to a mansion built in the Eliza- 

 bethan style, and you have no choice left but to bind the whole 

 scenery around in the same mathematical shackles ; you have 

 no alternative but to imprint the same formal design on the 

 whole space between your house and the horizon on every side. 

 Very beautiful, of course, tlie effect would be ; not at all expen- 

 sive, nor at all impossible ! 



I am very far, however, from asserting that no points in this 

 system are good, or that none of them should ever be introduced, 

 even around a mansion not built in the Elizabethan style. But 

 wherever introduced, they must be regarded as the exception, 

 not as the rule — as the foils which make beauty more charming ; 

 not as being in themselves intrinsically beautiful. The winding 



