FORMAL GARDENING. 315 



with the style of architecture. Where there is an immense, 

 long walk, and space on each side, there should be circles 

 every forty, or fifty, or eighty yards, the segments of which, 

 on both sides, should be ornamented with seats, and the 

 centre may be a basin for gold-fish, a fountain, a temple, or 

 some other device, not sufficient to interrupt a Yiew of the 

 entire length, but enough to break the monotony. The plant- 

 ing on either side should be perfectly uniform ; whatever 

 shaped bed, whatever kind of tree or shrub, may be placed on 

 one side, should be also placed on the other ; and there is no 

 rule for the construction of the edging. In formal gardening, 

 it may be stone, or box, or grass ; so that it be uniform, it 

 matters not what. Eock-work, in this kind of gardening, may 

 be as formal as a rough cone or pyramid, so it be in uniform 

 situation. Here it would be as bad taste to see water of irre- 

 gular shape, as it would to see a straight line in a landscape ; 

 therefore, unless a piece of water be of too large a space to see 

 the extent, or observe the figure, it must be altered to round, 

 or oval, or square, or half-circle, or some regular figure corre- 

 sponding with the scenery adjoining. 



Gates. — Walks and roads should lead to some object. The 

 most simple and appropriate, perhaps, is a gate or entrance ; 

 and so necessary is this, that we have abundant instances of 

 costly but useless gates at the ends of avenues, which gates are 

 necessary as ornaments, though they may never be opened. 

 But there is a good reason for the adoption of gates — they 

 afi'ord an opportunity of displacing architectural taste ; and 

 we may find another good reason in the idea they convey of 

 space. If the gates had a solid brick wall behind them, or 

 were not even made to open, they give one an idea that there 

 is something beyond, whereas a temple appears to be a finish. 

 In Bushy Park, we have a straight road, with a rich avenue 

 of chestnuts on both sides, a circular pond near the end, with 

 what should be a fountain, if it were not out of order, and 

 beyond this the noble gates, which lead out into the road 

 opposite the equally beautiful gates of Hampton Court Palace ; 

 and we have straight walks in these gardens, which lead to 

 another gate seldom opened, but they make a finish. 



Principles of Design. — It is impossible to set bounds to 

 the fancy in working out figures for beds on each side a walk 

 or road ; two or three points must, however, be kept in view. 

 Angles must not be too small : the great fault of many formal 



