258 ITbe <$ar&en 



or easily observed. And though we have hardly 

 any notion of this sort of beauty, yet they have 

 a particular word to express it, and where they 

 find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the 

 Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any such 

 expression of esteem, but I should hardly ad- 

 vise any of these attempts in the figure of gar- 

 dens among us. They are adventures of too 

 hard achievement for any common hands, and 

 though there may be more honor if they suc- 

 ceed well, yet there is more dishonor if they 

 fail, and it is twenty to one they will ; whereas 

 in regular figures it is hard to make any great 

 and remarkable faults." 



Fortunately, Kent and a few others were not 

 quite so timid, or we might still be going up 

 and down stairs in the open air. 



It is true we have heard much lately, as Sir 

 William Temple did, of irregularity and imita- 

 tions of nature in the gardens or grounds of the 

 Chinese. The former is certainly true. They 

 are as whimsically irregular as European gar- 

 dens are formally uniform and varied ; but 

 with regard to nature it seems as much avoided 

 as in the squares and oblongs and straight lines 

 of our ancestors. An artificial perpendicular 

 rock starting out of a flat plain and connected 

 with nothing, often pierced through in various 

 places with oval hollows, has no more preten- 



