WILLIAM SHENSTONE 167 



It is not so with a neighbouring nation, amongst whom gardens 

 in good taste are as common as magnificent palaces are rare. In 

 England, these kinds of walks, practicable in all weathers, seem 

 made to be the sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure; the 

 body is there relaxed, the mind diverted, the eyes are enchanted 

 by the verdure of the turf, and bowling-greens ; the variety of 

 flowers offers pleasant flattery to the smell and sight. There is 

 no pretence of lavishing on these places, I do not say small, but 

 even the most beautiful works of art. 



Nature alone, modestly arrayed, and never made up, there 

 spreads out her ornaments and benefits. How the fountains 

 beget the shrubs and beautify them ! How the shadows of the 

 woods put the streams to sleep in beds of herbage ! Let us call 

 the birds in these places of delight ; their concerts will draw man 

 hither, and will form a hundred times better eulogy of a taste for 

 sentiment, than marble and bronze whose display but produces a 

 stupid wonderment. — Encyclopcedia. (Jardm.) 



Poet and author. Seems to have been the inventor of the term " landscape- WILLIAM 

 gardening,^' as well as of the actual " Sentimental Faj-tn" the " Leasowes." SHENSTONE 



(1714-1763). 

 /^^ARDENING may be divided into three species — kitchen- 



^-^ gardening — parterre gardening — and landscape or pictur- 

 esque-gardening : which latter is the subject intended in the 

 following pages. It consists in pleasing the imagination by 

 scenes of grandeur, beauty or variety. Convenience merely has 

 no share here any further than it pleases the imagination. . . . 



Objects should indeed be less calculated to strike the imme- 

 diate eyes than the judgment or well-informed imagination, as 

 in painting. . . . 



I believe, however, the sublime has generally a deeper effect 

 than the merely beautiful. 



I use the words landscape and prospect, the former so 

 expressive of home scenes, the latter of distant images. Pros- 

 pects should take in the blue distant hills ; but never so remotely, 



