46 The Art of Landscape Gardening 



ularity and symmetry of correspondent parts, without 

 any knowledge of congruity or a harmony of parts with 

 the whole. This accounts for those numerous specimens 

 of bad taste which are too commonly observable in the 

 neighbourhood of great towns, where we see Grecian 

 villas spreading their little Gothic wings, and red-brick 

 castles supported by Grecian pavilions; but though 

 congruity may be banished, symmetry is never forgotten. 

 If such be the love of symmetry in the human mind, 

 it surely becomes a fair object of inquiry, how far it 

 ought to be admitted or rejected in modern gardening. 

 The following observation from Montesquieu, on 

 Taste,'° seems to set the matter in a fair light: 



"Wherever symmetry is useful to the soul, and may 

 assist her functions, it is agreeable to her; but wherever 

 it is useless, it becomes distasteful, because it takes away 

 variety. Therefore, things that we see in succession 

 ought to have variety, for our soul has no difficulty in 

 seeing them ; those, on the contrary, that we see at one 

 glance, ought to have symmetry: thus, at one glance 

 we see the front of a building, a parterre, a temple; in 

 such things there is always a symmetry which pleases 

 the soul by the facility it gives her of taking in the whole 

 object at once." 



It is upon this principle that I have frequently 

 advised the most perfect symmetry in those small 

 flower-gardens which are generally placed in the front 

 of a greenhouse, or orangery, in some inner part of 

 the grounds; where, being secluded from the general 

 scenery, they become a kind of episode to the great and 

 more conspicuous parts of the place. In such small 

 enclosures irregularity would appear like affectation. 

 Symmetry is also allowable, and indeed necessary, at 

 or near the front of a regular building; because, where 



