12 INTRODUCTION. 
may be said to depend on the use which he makes of foreign 
trees and shrubs. Our reasons for this are grounded on the 
principle that all art, to be acknowledged as such, must be 
avowed. This is the case in the fine arts: there is no attempt 
to conceal art in music, poetry, painting, or sculpture; none in 
architecture; and none in the geometrical style of landscape- 
gardening. Why should there be an attempt to conceal art in 
modern landscape-gardening? Because, we shall be told, it is: 
an art which imitates nature. But, does not landscape-painting 
also imitate nature; and yet, in it, the work produced is ac- 
knowledged to be one of art? Before this point is settled, it is’ 
necessary to recur to what is meant by the imitation of nature, 
and to reflect on the difference between repetition and imitation. 
In what are called the imitative arts, it will be found that the 
imitation is always made in such a manner as to produce a totally 
distinct work from the thing imitated; and never, on any ac~ 
count, so like as to be mistaken for it. In landscape-painting, 
scenery is represented by colours on a flat surface ; in sculpture, 
forms, which in nature are coloured, are represented in colour- 
less stone. The intention of the artist, in both cases, is not to 
produce a copy which shall be mistaken for the original,. but. 
rather to show the original through the medium of a particular’ 
description of art; to reflect nature as in a glass. Now, to 
render landscape-gardening a fine art, some analogous process 
must be adopted by the landscape-gardener. In the geometrical: 
style, he has succeeded perfectly, by arranging grounds and 
trees in artificial surfaces, forms, and lines, so different from) 
nature as to be recognised at once as works of art. A residence 
thus laid out is clearly distinguished from the woody scenery of: 
the surrounding country; and is satisfactory, because it displays: 
the working of the human mind, and confers distinction on the. 
owner as a man of wealth and taste. A residence laid out in. 
the modern style, with the surface of the ground disposed in 
imitation of the undulations of nature, and the trees scattered 
over it in groups and masses, neither in straight lines, nor cut 
into artificial shapes, might be mistaken for nature, were not 
the trees planted chiefly of foreign kinds not to be met with in 
the natural or general scenery of the country. Every thing in 
modern landscape-gardening, therefore, depends on the use of. 
foreign trees’ and shrubs; and, when it is once properly under- 
stood that no residence in the modern style can have a claim to 
be considered as laid out in good taste, in which. all. the trees 
and shrubs employed are not either foreign ones, or improved 
varieties of indigenous ones, the grounds of every country seat, 
from the cottage to the mansion, will become an arboretum, dif- 
fering only in the number of species which it contains. 
Though a taste for trees has existed from the earliest ages, 
that taste, in this country at least, may still be considered in its 
