31 2 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



flowers and fanciful gravel walks. Let there be terraces, 

 statues, vases, and all kinds of garden ornaments, if you will, 

 to be seen when we arrive, but let it burst on our view as we 

 emerge from our branch Avalk. Let there be circular, oval, 

 square, octagon, or oblong houses ; fountains, and fancy 

 flower-pots, all very delightful in their places, but keep them 

 in their places. ISTo mixture can be consistent with good 

 taste ; at least, such is the impression which we have, and are 

 likely to keep. We only want things called by their right 

 names. A landscape cannot be a geometrical figure ; and for 

 an avowedly artificial garden, order and uniformity can alone 

 be tolerated. 



Beauty in Scenery. — Tliis is touched upon in our direc- 

 tions for laying out ground for landscape gardenmg, but a few 

 remarks on those features which make up a beautiful scene 

 \viU lead to a consideration of what should be preserved as 

 well as things to be introduced. Beauty in scenery may be 

 made up of wood only, wood and water, wood, water, hill and 

 dale, and that too without any feature being better than may 

 be found in hundreds of j)laces. Of the latter, one of the 

 finest examjjles is the view from the to^) of Richmond Hill. 

 But there are features that could enliance the beauty of that 

 splendid scene. Imagine a clump of rocks from the Trent 

 by the Thames, a rustic watermill in the distance, the ruins 

 of Chepstow Castle in sight ! All these would be superb 

 additions to the grandeur of a scene already beautiful. It 

 is in the power of the landscape gardener to introduce all 

 these features in one harmonious scene, and at far less expense 

 than has been incurred in some of our noblemen's domains. 

 The great fault we have to find ^vith many costly places is 

 that the beauties are detached, that there is no regard f)aid 

 to the whole scenery harmonizing. Chatsworth is a mag- 

 nificent place, and many of the noble objects are, by them- 

 selves, faultless, but Chatsworth is not a whole. We admire 

 the rocks here, the waterfalls there, and the fountains some- 

 where else ; but is there any one comprehensive view like 

 that from Eichmond Hill ? And let it be borne in mind 

 that the real beauty of that scene does not take in a vast 

 tract of country — the beauty is in its harmony. It is a 

 whole, no matter whose land the eye rambles over, it is 

 all one scene, and might be, for all the spectator knows 

 or can see, all one man's laying out ; nor could the addi- 



