Iborace TOalpolc 257 



manner. How many Frenchmen are there who 

 have seen our gardens, and still prefer natural 

 flights of steps and shady cloisters covered with 

 lead? L,e Nautre, the architect of the groves 

 and grottos at Versailles, came hither on a 

 mission to improve our taste. He planted St. 

 James' and Greenwich parks no great monu- 

 ments of his invention. 



To do further justice jto Sir William Temple, 

 I must not omit what he adds : 



" What I have said of the best forms of gar- 

 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. 

 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 



