ON THE OLD AND NEW SYSTEMS OF FORMING 

 THE DRESS GROUNDS IN CONNECTION WITH THE ROUS] 



sis, i. t h.- days of Cent, Mason, and Brown, our first promoters <>f the 

 English or natural stylo of Landscape Gardening, we have had a good deal 

 of argument, both for ami against the new and old systems; ami, notwith- 

 standing the alile ami eelehrateil men who have lived within the last century. 

 contending for and endeavouring to establish the English or natural Btyle, 

 there still evidently exists a danger of true taste giving way to mannerism. 

 There are some professors of the art of Landscape Gardening in tin- present 

 day, who contend that the formal style should invariably be associated with 

 tin- Cast, Hated, the Elizabethan, the Gothic, or Manorial building j but why. 

 I am totally at a loss to understand. Thej certainly bave antiquity on th< ir 

 M.le. if that is their vantage ground; hut will they tell us that Landscap 

 Gardening, like Architecture, had reached the acme of perfection in ancient 

 times, or that further improvement is impossible? Will they tell us that, 

 heeause it was the fashion in former days to associate terraces, and halus- 

 trades, and flights of steps. &c, with the Elizabethan, the Castellated, the 

 Gothic, or Manorial style, and to embellish the kept grounds with geometrical 

 and formal parterres, bowling greens, oblong ponds, nigh .lipped bedges, and 

 fantastical hushes, it is, therefore, right to continue this practice, as if these 

 were fixed and unalterable principles? They may, indeed, tell us so, but 

 they will have difficulty in convincing us of the fact Such principles, in 



new formations, are quite inadmissible at the present day. The fact of our 

 tin, hue Italian. Dutch, and flemish gardens, indiscriminately associated 

 with the old English, Elizabethan or Gothic, Grecian and Italian, styles of 

 architecture, is sufficient to prove to any unprejudiced mind, that there neither 

 are, nor ever were, any fixed principles in Landscape Gardening calculated 



