Formal Gardening 45 



within lofty walls, the narrow enclosure appropriated to 

 ancient grandeur. 



When the whole design is meant to be surveyed at 

 a single glance, the eye is assisted in its office by mak- 

 ing its divisions counterparts of each other ; and as it 

 was confessedly the object of the artist to display his 

 labour, and the greatness of the effort by which he had 

 subdued nature, it could not possibly be more conspic- 

 uous than in such shapes of land and water as were most 

 unnatural and violent. Hence arose the flat terrace, the 

 square and octagon pool, and all those geometric figures 

 which were intended to contrast and not to assimilate 

 with any scenes in nature. Yet within this small enclos- 

 ure an unity of design was strictly preserved, and few 

 attempts made to extend it farther than the garden wall. 



From the prodigious difference of taste in gardening 

 betwixt the last and the present century, it seems, at first 

 sight, almost impossible to lay down any fixed princi- 

 ples ; but, on duly considering the subject, it will be 

 found that in this instance, as well as in many others, 

 mankind are apt to fly from one extreme to the other; 

 thus, because straight lines, and highly finished and cor- 

 respondent parts prevailed in the ancient style, some 

 modern improvers have mistaken crookedness for the 

 line of beauty, and slovenly carelessness for natural ease ; 

 they call every species of regularity formal, and, with 

 the hackneyed assertion that " nature abhors a straight 

 line," they fatigue the eye with continual curvatures. 



There appears to be in the human mind a natural love 

 of order and symmetry. Children who at first draw 

 a house upon a slate generally represent it with corre- 

 spondent parts. It is so with the infancy of taste ; those 

 who, during the early part of life, have given little at- 

 tention to objects of taste, are captivated with the reg- 



