irntro&uctlon 19 



admittance. It contains about 100 acres disposed 

 in the taste of what we read of in books of Chinese 

 Gardening whence it is supposed the EngHsh style 

 was taken. There is more of Sir WilHam Chambers 

 here than of Mr. Brown, more effort than nature 

 — and more expense than taste. It is not easy to 

 conceive anything that art can introduce in a garden 

 that is not here; woods, rocks, lawns, lakes, rivers, 

 islands, grottoes, walks, temples, and even villages. 

 There are parts of the design very pretty, and well 

 executed. The only fault is too much crowding; 

 which has led to another, that of cutting the lawn by 

 too many gravel walks, an error to be seen in almost 

 every garden I have met with in France." 



Abbe Delille did his share in advancing the new ideas 

 which had already been advocated by Pere Huet and 

 Dufresny in the middle of the seventeenth century 

 before Addison or any of the EngHsh critics wrote on 

 the subject. 



In his Huetiana (1722) Pierre Daniel Huet, Bishop 

 of Avranches, writes: 



"Although natural beauties are preferable to 

 artistic ones, that is not the taste of this century. 

 Nothing pleases that is not costly. A fountain 

 issuing in great cascades from the foot of a rock 

 tumbling over a golden sand, the clearest and freshest 

 water in the world will not please the people at court 

 as much as a jet ot foetid and muddy water drawn at 

 enormous cost from a frog marsh. A factitious 



