AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



The design of the following work is aUogether a practical 

 cue. While engaged in his profession, during the last eigh- 

 teen years, the author has often been requested to recom- 

 mend a book, which might enable persons consulting him to 

 acquire some general knowledge of the principles of Land- 

 scape-gardening, and which might aid them in carrying his 

 suggestions into effect. He has been in the habit of naming 

 certain well-known works, such as Price " On the Pictur- 

 esque," and Gilpin " On Landscape-gardening." He has often 

 felt, however, that such advice was, in great measure, illusory ; 

 and that if implicitly followed, it would tend rather to puzzle 

 than to enlighten or direct those who might adopt it. He 

 himself had experienced the difficulty of making practical ap- 

 plication of the general reasonings, and of the diffuse, and, 

 at times, irrelevant discussions to be found in some of these 

 authors ; and it was only by means of light derived from his 

 own practice that he was able to put them to profit. In the 

 work of Price, for example, the leading precepts substantially 



