LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 267 



have lately begun to imitate them. Nature is now followed 

 with greater assiduity than formerly : the trees are suffered 

 to shoot out into the utmost luxuriance ; — the streams, no 

 longer forced from their native beds, are permitted to wind 

 along the valleys : spontaneous flowers take the place of the 

 finished parterre, and the enamelled meadow of the shaven 

 green/^ 



Batty Langley was one of the exponents of the principles 

 which guided some of these Landscape-Gardeners. The chief 

 of them he lays down in twenty-eight rules, among which 

 are the following : — " The grand front of the building lies 

 open upon an elegant lawn, adorned with statues, terminated 

 on its sides with open groves." " Such walks whose views 

 cannot be extended terminate in Woods, Forests, misshapen 

 Rocks, strange Precipices, Mountains, old Ruins, grand buildings, 

 &c." " No regular evergreens in any part of an open plain or 

 parterre." " No borders or scroll work cut in any lawn or 

 parterre.'^ " That all gardens be grand, beautiful and natural.'" 

 "That all the trees in your shady walks and groves be planted 

 with sweet Briar, white Jessemine, and Honeysuckle, environed 

 at the Bottom with a small circle of Dwarf stock, Candy tuft 

 and Pinks." " Hills and Dales be made by art where Nature 

 has not performed the act before." " That the intersections of 

 walks be adorned with statues," and many like rules for the 

 correct way of making " rivulets, aviaries, grottoes, cascades, 

 rocks, ruins, niches, canals, and fishponds." He also gives a long 

 list of what statues were most suitable for each place : — Pomona 

 in the Orchard, Harpocrates, the God of Silence, for a grove, 

 and so on. This subject of statues much perturbed some of 

 the designers. "The use of statues," wrote George Mason, "is 

 a dangerous attempt in gardening, not impossible, however, to 

 be practised with success : how peculiarly happy is the position 

 of the river God at Stourhead (Sir Richard Hoare's) in Wiltshire I 

 ... I remember a figure at Hagley,"^ which one could fancy 

 darting across the Alley of a grove . . . and only wished the 

 pedestal had been concealed." These statues, urns and 



* T-aid out by Lord Lyttleton. 



