152 Landscape Gardening 



- all this suggests rather a statue gallery in the open air, 



- an accompaniment to the fair architecture of the man- 

 sion, than any pure or natural ideas of landscape beauty. 



The only writer who has ever attempted to account for 

 this striking distinction of national taste in gardening, which 

 distinguishes the people of northern and southern Europe, 

 is Humboldt. In his last great work --" Cosmos," he 

 has devoted some pages to the consideration of the study 

 of nature, and the description of natural scenery, - - a por- 

 tion of the work in the highest degree interesting to every 

 man of taste, as well as every lover of nature. 



In this portion he shows, we think, very conclusively, 

 that certain races of mankind, however great in other gifts, 

 are deficient in their perceptions of natural beauty; that 

 northern nations possess the love of nature much more 

 strongly than those of the south; and that the Greeks and 

 Romans, richly gifted as they were with the artistic endow- 

 ments, were inferior to other nations in a profound feeling 

 of the beauty of nature. 



Humboldt also show^s that our enjoyment of natural land- 

 scape gardening, which many suppose to have originated 

 in the cultivated and refined taste of a later age, is, on the 

 contrary, purely a matter of national organization. The 

 parks of the Persian monarchs, and the pleasure gardens of 

 the Chinese, were characterized by the same spirit of natural 

 beauty which \ve see in the English landscape gardens, and 

 w 7 hich is widely distinct from that elegant formality of the 

 geometric gardens of the Greeks and Romans of several 

 centuries later. To prove how 7 sound were the principles of 

 Chinese taste, ages ago, he gives us a quotation from an 

 ancient Chinese writer, Lieu-tscheu, which might well be the 

 text of the most tasteful improver of the present day, and 

 which we copy for the study of our ow r n readers. 



"What is it," says Lieu-tscheu, "that \ve seek in the 

 pleasures of a garden? It has always been agreed that 

 these plantations should make men amends for living at a 

 distance from what would be their more congenial and 

 agreeable dwelling place, in the midst of nature, free and 



