io8 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



poet, and Shenstone, our moon-struck friend quoted 

 above, with his " assignation seats with proper 

 mottoes, urns to faithful lovers," &c. Dr Johnson 

 did not think much of Shenstone's contributions to 

 gardening : 



" He began from this time to point his prospects, to diversify 

 his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters, which he 

 did with such judgement and such fancy as made his little domain the 

 envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful — a place to be 

 visited by travellers and copied by designers. Whether to plant a 

 walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where 

 there is an object to catch the view, to make water run where 

 it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen ; to leave 

 intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plan- 

 tation where there is something to be hidden — demand any great 

 powers of the mind, I will not enquire ; perhaps a surly and 

 sullen spectator may think such performances rather the sport than 

 the business of human reason."— (Dr Johnson, " Lives of the Poets," 

 Shenstone.) 



Whately's "Observations on Modern Garden- 

 ing," published in 1770, are well written and dis- 

 tinctly valuable as bearing upon the historical side 

 of the subject. It says little for his idea of the value 

 of Art in a garden, or of the function of a garden as 

 a refining influence in life, to find Whately recom- 

 mending "a plain field or a sheep-walk" as part of 

 a garden's embellishments — " as an agreeable relief, 

 and even wilder scenes." 



But what astounds one more is, that a writer of 

 Whately's calibre can describe Kent's gardens at 

 Stowe, considered to be his masterpiece, as a sample 

 of the non-formality of the landscape-gardener's Art, 

 while he takes elaborate pains to show that it is full 

 of would-be artistic subterfuges in Nature, full of 



