THE ''LANDSCAPE-GARDEN:' 107 



take lony to transform the stiff garden into the 

 barbaric. It did not take long to find out how not 

 to do what civiHzation had so long been learning 

 how to do ! The ancient " Geometric or Regular 

 style " of garden — the garden of the aristocrat, with 

 all its polished classicism — was to make way for the 

 so-called " Naturalesque or Landscape style," and the 

 garden of the bourgeois. Hope rose high in the 

 breasts of the new professoriate. " A boon ! a 

 boon ! " quoth the critic. And there is deep joy in 

 navvydom. " Under the great leader, Brown," 

 writes Repton ('' Landscape Gardening," p. 327), " or 

 rather those who patronised his discovery, we were 

 taught that Nature was to be our only model." It 

 was a grand moment. A Daniel had come to judg- 

 ment ! Nay, did not Brown " live to establish a 

 fashion in gardening which might have been expected 

 to endure as long as Nature should exist ! " 



The Landscape School of Gardeners, so-called, 

 has been the theme of a great deal of literature, but 

 with the exception of Walpole's and Addison's essays, 

 and Pope's admirable chaff, very little has survived 

 the interest it had at the moment of publication. 



The other chief writers of this School, in its early 

 phase, are George Mason, Whately,* Mason the 



* Thomas Whately's " Observations on Modern Gardening," was 

 published in 1770, fifteen years before Walpole's "Essay on Modern 

 Gardening." Gilpin's book "On Picturesque Beauty," though pub- 

 lished in part in 1782, belongs really to the second phase of the Land- 

 scape School. Shenstone's " Unconnected Thoughts on the Garden " 

 was published in 1764, and is written pretty much from the standpoint 

 of Kent. "An Essay on Design in (hardening," by G. Mason, was 

 published in 1795. 



