12 ARRANGEMENT OF GARDENS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS 



securing the most tasteful concentration within a given space of 

 the greatest beauties of nature and art. 



Glancing back upon this concise description of that assuredly 

 false fashion, I should imagine that no enthusiast — nay, no mo- 

 nomaniacal enthusiast — in favour of the Elizabethan style in 

 architecture, would seriously press, as an accompaniment to the 

 revival of that style, the resuscitation of tlie fasliion in gardening. 

 The truth is that such a notion involves too many contradictions 

 in taste and absurdities in fact to be tolerated by any rational man. 

 In the first place (while it is quite true that there can be no dis- 

 puting about tastes, and that, as a matter of riglit, every man may 

 be to his own taste, just as he has a right to cut off liis own nose, 

 and look very ugly as a necessary consequence), what unavoidable 

 connexion is tliere between the peculiar style of building invented 

 in one particular age, and the style of {gardening which happened 

 to have grown into a certain fashion at that same period ? For 

 it is obvious, that then, as now and always, new houses were 

 built in grounds long previously laid out and kept up. It should 

 be borne in mind moreover, that the earliest work quoted by me, 

 which passed through several editions during a considerable 

 course of years, is much more a record of then existing fashion 

 than a treatise propounding a new theory. And the truth is, 

 that all which was cared for, even before the first mansion in the 

 Elizabethan style was erected, was the enjoyment of certain 

 limited out-door comforts and pleasures near the house: all that 

 was effected was as wretched a rule and line arrangement of that 

 small space of ground as ever libelled the taste of an educated 

 man. There is no more connecting link between the house and 

 the garden of that age as to character than between a Grecian 

 temple and a Chinese garden — an Italian palace and Westmore- 

 land scenery — a Saxon liomestead and Hampton Court gardens — 

 the modern polka and the venerable minuet de la cour. 



In the next place, on what principle is it asserted that the 

 ground around the house must be forced into a similarity of style 

 with it, even allowing that such connexion of style did really 

 exist ? It is clear that the ground in Elizabeth's time seldom or 

 never formed any part of the architect's design : he took it as he 

 found it : or, if he did not build among grounds already laid out, 

 they were arranged afterwards according to the existing fashion, 

 having no respect to the arcliitecture. The principle, liowever, 

 which is really involved is this : — Are the grounds and scenery 

 around a mansion to be laid out in an ugly fashion, merely be- 

 cause that ugly fashion existed when the revived style of archi- 

 tecture was first designed ; or because tlie one is assumed to be 

 in harmony witli tlie other? or, on the other hand, is the archi- 

 tecture itself to be in harmony with the general character of the 



