Chapter IX 



Sources of Pleasure in Landscape Gardening 



AFTER sedulously endeavouring to discover the 

 causes of the pleasure that the mind receives 

 from landscape gardening, I think it may occasionally 

 be attributed to each of the following different heads: 



I. Congruity ; or a proper adaptation of the several 

 parts to the whole ; and that whole to the character, 

 situation, and circumstances of the place and its 

 possessor. 



II. Utility. This includes convenience, comfort, 

 neatness, and everything that conduces to the purposes 

 of habitation with elegance. 



III. Order. Including correctness and finishing; the 

 cultivated mind is shocked by such things as would 

 not be visible to the clown : thus, an awkward bend 

 in a walk, or lines which ought to be parallel, and 

 are not so, give pain ; as a serpentine walk through 

 an avenue, or along the course of a straight wall or 

 building. 



IV. Symmetry ; or that correspondence of parts ex- 

 pected in the front of buildings, particularly Grecian, 

 which, however formal in a painting, require similar- 

 ity and uniformity of parts to please the eye, even of 

 children. So natural is the love of order and of sym- 

 metry to the human mind that it is not surprising it 

 should have extended itself into our gardens, where 

 nature itself was made subservient by cutting trees 

 into regular shapes, planting them in rows, or at exact 



