CHAPTER VII 

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RURAL TASTE* 



ALL travellers agree, that while the English people are 

 far from being remarkable for their taste in the arts 

 generally, they are unrivalled in their taste for land- 

 scape gardening. So completely is this true, that wherever 

 on the continent one finds a garden, conspicuous for the 

 taste of its design, one is certain to learn that it is laid out 

 in the "English style," and usually kept by an English 

 gardener. 



Not, indeed, that the south of Europe is wanting in mag- 

 nificent gardens, which are as essentially national in their 

 character as the parks and pleasure grounds of England. 

 The surroundings of the superb villas of Florence and Rome, 

 are fine examples of a species of scenery as distinct and 

 striking as any to be found in the world; but which, how- 

 ever splendid, fall as far below the English gardens in 

 interesting the imagination, as a level plain does below the 

 finest mountain valley in Switzerland. In the English 

 landscape garden, one sees and feels everywhere the spirit 

 of nature, only softened and refined by art. In the French 

 or Italian garden, one sees and feels only the effects of art, 

 slightly assisted by nature. In one, the free and luxuriant 

 growth of every tree and shrub, the widening and curving 

 of every walk, suggests perhaps even a higher ideal of 

 nature, - - a miniature of a primal paradise, as we would 

 imagine it to have been by divine right; in the other, the 

 prodigality of works of art, the variety of statues and vases, 

 terraces and balustrades, united with walks marked by 

 the same studied symmetry and artistic formality, and only 

 mingled with just foliage enough to constitute a garden, 



* Original dale of August, 1849. 

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