198 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



composition of such a garden. It is more proper when in the 

 neighbourhood of a great city and thrown open to all the world 

 than when in a remote province, and for that reason some of 

 the French gardens have an excuse which those at Stow have 

 not. 



A garden like this is a kind of fairy land. It is in comparison 

 of other gardens what an opera is in comparison of a tragedy : 

 neither of them should be judged by the ordinary rules of 

 experience or taste, but by the capricious ones of variety and 

 Fancy. — Observations on Modern Gardening, atid laying out 

 Pleasure-Groiaids^ Parks, Ridings, 6^r. {A new edition 1801, with 

 notes hy Horace Walpoie, late Earl of Orford ; and ornamented with 

 coloured plates, chiefly designed by Mr Woollet, of Hall Bar7i, Esher, 

 Carlton House, Wooburn^ Pain's Hill and Hagley.) 



'AAA/>— 



CHARLES One of the most cosmopolitan and accofnplished men of arms and letters 



JOSEPH, luho ever lived: ' Le seul stranger,' said Mme. de Stael, 'qui dans le genre 



^^^^^^^Pj. Francais, soil devemi tnodele, an lieu d'etre imitateur.' ^ I have six or seven 



Tj^-.jgjrf countries; he declared. Born in Brussels, he entered the Austrian army at 



the age of \'], fought with distinction in the Seven Years War, and was then 



invited to the French Court by the Comte d'Artois. Sent on a mission to 



Russia, he was made a Field-Marshal hy Catherine the Great, with an estate 



in the Crimea. A Citizen of the World zvith the freedo?n of all the Courts 



of Europe, a dandy of the first water and a brilliant wit and ' causeicr,' he had 



also a most delicate instinct for letters, a vein of serious reflection rvorked in 



epigram, ajid a fine taste in designing gardens. 



AINTE-BEU VE writes thus of the Prince's Essay on Gardens :— 

 Parmi les ouvrages decousus echappes au prince de Eigne 

 dans la premiere moitie de sa vie, et qui le peignent le mieux a 

 cette date, je distingue ce qu'il a ecrit sur les jardins a I'occasion 

 de ceux de Beloeil. Coup d'ceil sur Belail, avait-il intitule son 

 Essai (1781) par un de ces jeux de mots et de ces sortes de 

 calembours qui sont un de ses petits travers. C'etait le temps 

 oil I'abbe Delille publiait son poeme des Jardins, et disait de ce 



S 



