THE ARTIFICIAL LANDSCAPE GARDENS 229 



" Thanks, Sir, I cried, 'tis very fine, 

 But where d'ye sleep, or where d'ye dine ? 

 I find by all you have been telling, 

 That 'tis a house, but not a dwelling." 



Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the thirteenth of his admirable 

 Discourses, remarks that Vanbrugh " was defrauded of the due 

 reward of his merit by the wits of the time " ; and we can 

 heartily concur in his opinion as a painter, that Vanbrugh, 

 " had originality of invention, he understood light and shade> 

 and had great skill in composition." 



In all these great houses the lay out helped the general 

 effect ; the gardens and the groves were designed in the same 

 spirit as the houses which they surrounded. Those at Stowe 

 were the most famous of their time. There was but little 

 formality about them, although they were traversed by a few 

 straight walks and vistas (Fig. 156). They embodied, indeed, 

 the new idea which eschewed formality, and sought to gain 

 the help of nature without apparent effort (Fig. 157). They 

 covered a considerable amount of space, and were diversified 

 by undulations of varied steepness, and by great masses of trees. 

 The landscape thus provided by nature was improved by art. 

 A stream was made to fall here, to wind there, to broaden out 

 into a lake elsewhere. Paths were contrived to pass through 

 thickets, to descend a dell, to curve beneath a lofty mound 

 crowned with a " temple," to undulate along the edge of a copse 

 and overlook meadows sloping down to the lake. The whole 

 was studded at intervals with buildings, each of which had a 

 character of its own. There were grottoes, temples, arches, 

 rotundas, and columns, designed by Vanbrugh, Leoni, Kent, and 

 others. They were so placed amid the trees, the meadows, and 

 the water as to remind the spectator of pictures of Italian 

 scenery. Half Italy was squeezed into two hundred acres of 

 English countryside. A Corinthian arch admitted the principal 

 approach from Buckingham. There were many temples ; among 

 them one to Venus, one to Bacchus, others to the Ancient Virtues, 

 to the Modern Virtues (in ruins a costly piece of satire which 

 must speedily have palled), to British worthies, to Concord and 

 Victory, to Friendship and to other deities and abstractions. 

 There was Dido's cave in one place, and St Augustine's in 

 another, a Fane of Pastoral Poetry elsewhere ; there were 

 monuments to people of more or less eminence, archways com- 



