ii4 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



upon " Forest Scenery," well illustrated. This work- 

 is in eight volumes, in part published in 1782, and 

 it consists mainly in an account of the author's tours 

 in every part of Great Britain, with a running com- 

 mentary on the beauties of the scenery, and a 

 description of the important country seats he passed 

 on the way. Price helped by his writings to stay 

 the rage for destroying avenues and terraces, and 

 we note that he is fully alive to the necessity of 

 uniting a country-house with the surrounding scenery 

 by architectural adjuncts. 



The taste for picturesque gardening was doubt- 

 less helped by the growing taste for landscape paint- 

 ing, exhibited in the works of the school of Wilson 

 and Gainsborough, and in the pastoral writings of 

 Thomson, Crabbe, Cowper, and Gray. It would 

 farther be accelerated, as we suggested at the outset 

 of this chapter, by the large importation of foreign 

 plants and shrubs now going on. 



What is known as the Picturesque School soon 

 had for its main exponent Repton. He was a genius 

 in his way a born gardener, "* able and thoughtful in 

 his treatments, and distinguished among his fellows 

 by a broad and comprehensive grasp of the whole 

 character and surroundings of a site, in reference to 

 the general section of the land, the style of the house 

 to which his garden was allied, and the objects for 

 which it was to be used. The sterling quality of his 



* Loudon calls this School " Repton's," the " Gardenesque" School, 

 its characteristic feature being " the display of the beauty of trees and 

 other plants individually." 



