Sir 'ddilliam tTempIe 121 



dens is meant only of such as are in some sort 

 regular, for there may be other forms wholly 

 irregular that may, for aught I know, have 

 more beauty than any of the others ; but they 

 must owe it to some extraordinary dispositions 

 of nature in the seat, or some great race of 

 fancy or judgment in the contrivance, which 

 may reduce many disagreeing parts into some 

 figure which shall yet, upon the whole, be very 

 agreeable. Something of this I have seen in 

 some places, but heard more of it from others 

 who have lived much among the Chinese a 

 people whose way of thinking seems to lie as 

 wide of ours in Europe as their country does. 

 Among us the beauty of building and planting 

 is placed chiefly in some certain proportions, 

 symmetries, or uniformities our walks and our 

 trees ranged so as to answer one another, and 

 at exact distances. The Chinese scorn this 

 way of planting, and say, a boy, that can tell an 

 hundred, may plant walks of trees in straight 

 lines, and over against one another, and to 

 what length and extent he pleases. But their 

 greatest reach of imagination is employed in 

 contriving figures, where the beauty shall be 

 great and strike the eye, but without any order 

 or disposition of parts that shall be commonly 

 or easily observed ; and, though we have hard- 

 ly any notion of this sort of beauty, yet they 



