36 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS 



clump of trees and ornamental water were indis- 

 pensable to any place arranged by Brown. Twist- 

 ing water into serpentine shapes was his favourite 

 plan; "at Blenheim he covered a narrow valley 

 with an artificial river," and on surveying his 

 work he was heard to murmur, " Thames, Thames, 

 thou wilt never forgive me ! " 



The grievance against this " consummate man- 

 nerist " would have been comparatively small if 

 he had contented himself with the creating of new 

 Gardens, but it is his wholesale destruction of the 

 old which must fill every one with regret. 



This passion for the imitation of Nature was 

 passing like a wave over Europe, causing a re- 

 action, not only in Gardens, but in art and litera- 

 ture. For Rousseau preached Nature ; as Taine 

 says, he "made the dawn visible to people who 

 had never risen till noon, the landscape to eyes 

 that had only rested hitherto upon drawing-rooms 

 and palaces, the natural Garden to men who had 

 only walked between tonsured Yews and rectilinear 

 Flower Borders." Then Richardson, the novelist, 

 followed Rousseau, and helped, with others, to 

 weave " sentiment " as well as " Nature " into 

 Gardens. Thus the Landscape style had to be 

 made to express not only Nature, but to display 

 emotions and feelings like a human being. 



Shenstone, the poet, carried his own Garden at 

 Leasowes, in Shropshire, to the highest pitch of 



