46 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



lacking the formal inspiration of the previous style and lacking also 

 any sufficient inspiration of its own, soon palled even upon those who 

 had first greeted it with enthusiasm. Novelty was secured by the 

 introduction of Chinese pagodas and other oriental details to which 

 the accounts of visitors to the East had turned the public attention, and 

 by the fanciful buildings of iheferme ornee. (For a later French example, 

 see Drawing XII, opp. p. 84.) And designers found again in the litera- 

 ture of the time a new impetus to an ideal which landscape design might 

 strive to express. 



In France, the Romantic movement had attained full expression 

 in the works of J. J. Rousseau, and people, already familiar in literature 

 with the conscious cultivation of emotions, were turning to Nature for 

 some indefinable primal excellence not found in the works of man. The 

 "jardin anglais" imported eagerly as a novelty and as a protest against 

 formalism, acquired a new significance by the introduction of objects 

 and the arrangement of scenes each with the express purpose of arousing 

 a certain emotion in its observers. The particular phase of the "land- 

 scape school" thus accentuated spread rapidly on the continent and in 

 England where it had had early beginnings in such a garden as Stowe.* 

 This may well be called the Romantic landscape style. (See Plates 2 

 and 3.) Its designers seized upon and increased to the best of their 

 abilities the natural characters which were at hand and were capable 

 of producing such emotions as grandeur or desolation or melancholy; 

 but in the great majority of cases the natural features within the 

 limits of their designs were not capable of producing in their hands the 

 striking emotional effects which they sought, and they had recourse 

 to all sorts of expedients, which through associational appeal usually 

 through some human interest were supposed to arouse the emotions 

 desired. Weeping willows added their sentiment to the scene. Dead 

 trees were set up, perhaps to increase the effect of wild naturalness as 

 well as to stimulate a feeling of melancholy in their decay. Artificial 

 ruins were constructed for the sake of a romantic human interest; 

 even tombs of imaginary heroes or heroines were built, and appeals 

 were made even more simply to the pleasures of the imagination by 



* See Stowe : a Description of the Magnificent House and Gardens, with illustra- 

 tions, of which the first edition appeared in 1744. 



