LANDSCAPE-GARDENING. 



595 



talent facile as it was fanciful, brought her before 

 the world while yet a girl, as an enthusiastic and 

 constant literary labourer. To her honour, it 

 must be added, that the fruits of her incessant 

 exertion were neither selfishly hoarded nor fool- 

 ishly trifled away but applied to the maintenance 

 and advancement of her family. It might be partly 

 the early consciousness of this power to befriend 

 others, and partly the indiscriminate flatteries of 

 those by whom she was surrounded and pushed 

 forward at her first entrance into authorship, which 

 encouraged her to such ceaseless composition as 

 necessarily precluded the thought and cultivation 

 essential to the production of poetry of the highest 

 order. Hence, with all their fancy and feeling, 

 her principal works the ' Improvisatrice,' the 

 ' Troubadour,' the 'Golden Violet,' the 'Golden 

 Bracelet,' and the 'Vow of the Peacock,' bear a 

 strong family likeness to each other in their recur- 

 rence to the same sources of allusion, and the same 

 veins of imagery, in the conventional rather than 

 natural colouring of their descriptions, and in the 

 excessive though not unmusical carelessness of their 

 versification. It should be remarked, however, 

 that in spite of the ceaseless strain upon her powers, 

 and the ceaseless distractions of a London life, 

 Miss Landon accomplished much for her own mind 

 in the progress of its career ; that she had reached 

 a deeper earnestness of thought had added largely 

 to the stores of her knowledge, and done muoh 

 towards the polishing and perfecting of her verse. 

 Besides her poetry, Miss Landon's three novels 

 'Romance and Reality," 'Francesca Carrara,' and 

 'Ethel Churchill,' remain to attest her powers as 

 a prose writer. They are all of them stories of 

 sentiment : the two latter relieved by glimpses of 

 such gay and courtly life, as Watteau loved to 

 paint, and Walpole and Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 

 tague to embalm in their correspondence. In right 

 of this spirit, they in some degree reflect the con- 

 versation of their authoress, which sparkled always 

 brightly with quick fancy, and a badinage astonish- 

 ing to those matter-of-fact persons who expected 

 to find, in the manners and discourse of the poet- 

 ess, traces of the weary heart, the broken lute, 

 and the disconsolate willow tree, which were so 

 frequently her themes of song. Another novel 

 was in progress at the time she was snatched away 

 with such awful suddenness, it having been her 

 purpose to maintain her literary relations with 

 England, and her hope to produce yet better and 

 fresher works. Had her life been spared, this 

 hope would, we think, have been fulfilled. As it 

 is, the public will recollect pleasantly what she 

 has achieved, and feel the void caused by the with- 

 drawal of her graceful and versatile fancy. Her 

 private friends arid her literary contemporaries, 

 too, will remember her long, as one alike kind, 

 affectionate, and liberal." To this estimate of Miss 

 Landon's talents and performances, we may add, 

 that her first productions were brought forward 

 about the year 1822, in the pages of the Lite- 

 rary Gazette, to which she was mainly indebted 

 for her reputation, and to which she continued for 

 many years a frequent contributor. It is well 

 known how largely she has contributed to many 

 other periodicals, and to nearly all the Annuals, of 

 some of which she wrote all the poetry, as Fisher's 

 drawiug-Room Scrap book (eight quarto volumes), 

 the Flowers of Loveliness, and the Bijou Al- 

 manac. 

 LANDSCAPE-GARDENING, (a. to the article 



Gardening.) The old English pleasure-garden, as 

 it was called, was constructed on the principle of 

 making nature conform to art, not art to nature. 

 Shrubs and trees were cut into fantastic shapes, 

 walks were measured and squared with mathemati- 

 cal precision, terraces were raised in opposition to 

 valleys, and canals were dug in place of meander- 

 ing streams. The modern or natural style of gar- 

 dening was first advocated by Pope and Addison, 

 and more recently by Mason and Walpole ; but 

 Milton, in his description of Paradise, seems to have 

 anticipated all English authors on this subject. 

 The first artist who practised the modern style 

 were Bridgeman and Kent, who both lived in the 

 early part of the last century, and the latter of 

 whom carried Pope's ideas of what gardening 

 should be extensively into execution. He banished 

 verdant sculpture, or the clipping of trees into 

 monstrous figures ; he disdained to make every di- 

 vision of the garden tally to its opposite ; he diver, 

 sified the walks by groves of oak and cultivated 

 fields; and above all, he abolished walls for boun- 

 daries, and introduced sunk fences. The country- 

 seats in which the modern style was first employed 

 are described by Shenstone, Mason, and Whately. 

 Wright, Brown, Holland, Ernes, and Repton, were 

 the most distinguished successors of Kent in the 

 art. Archibald, duke of Argyll, was among the 

 first to introduce foreign trees arid plants, with the 

 view of colouring the landscape. The mixture of 

 various greens, and the contrast of forms between 

 our trees and those of other countries, were ini. 

 provements unknown to Kent. The taste of the 

 present day in landscape gardening has been chas- 

 tened and refined by the writings of Price, Knight, 

 Alison, Dugald Stewart, and other eminent authors. 

 Gilpin and Prince Piickler Muskau are the most 

 recent writers on the subject. (" Hints on Land- 

 scape Gardening." By W. S. Gilpin, Esq. 1832, 

 8vo. On the same, by Prince Piickler Muskau. 

 Stuttgart, 1834.) 



It is not every situation in which much can be 

 effected in the way of actual landscape ; therefore, 

 in a level confined spot of limited extent, as will 

 often be the case with the grounds attached to a 

 small villa, it would be better not to aim at it, 

 especially should there happen to be no prospect 

 beyond their boundary, but rather to have recourse 

 exclusively to ornamental gardening, by which term 

 we would, for distinction's sake, denominate that 

 species which admits more of the obviously artifi- 

 cial character, and more of studied, elaborate cul- 

 ture, than the other. The grounds immediately 

 surrounding a residence ought always to partake 

 more or less of this style, to serve as a connecting 

 link between the building and the landscape scenery, 

 properly so termed. Here a high degree of arti- 

 ficial beauty may be tolerated, provided the arti- 

 ficial be not suffered to degenerate into the unna- 

 tural; that is, the artificial must not show itself 

 so as to shock common sense. We are aware that 

 flowers disposed in parterres or planted in marble 

 vases, trellises covered with trailing plants, level 

 terraces, and uniform slopes, are not the spontan- 

 eous work of nature, but produced by the skill and 

 industry of man ; yet so are the roads of a coun- 

 try, the hedges which enclose lands, and tilled 

 fields themselves. The very idea of a garden is 

 that of a carefully cultivated spot ; consequently 

 the artificial character may be permitted to mani- 

 fest itself decidedly in the ornamental species, care 

 being taken that violence is not done to nature 

 2 p2 



