306 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



PARK SIDE OF ITALIAN GARDENS. 



endowed with many qualities of a leader, was really 

 much in advance of his time. He was a munificent 

 patron of literature and the arts, and, both at his town 

 and country houses, entertained many of the most 

 cultivated men of the day. He devoted great attention 

 to the improvement of his large estates in Wiltshire, 

 and told Johnson that " a man of rank who looks 

 into his own affairs may have all that he ought to 

 have, all that can he of any use, or appear with any 

 advantage, for ^5,000 a year." He greatly beautified 

 Bowood, adding the long wing on the west side of 

 his father's house, wherein is the orangery, taking as 

 his model a wing of the Emperor Diocletian's palace 

 at Spalatro in Dalmatia. This now constitutes the 

 facade of two quadrangular courts forming the 

 domestic offices. The Marquess employed Capa- 

 bility Brown to lay out the grounds, and though 

 they have undergone various changes since, we may 

 still trace the trained hand of the celebrated landscape 

 gardener in many of the effects of the park. Lord 

 Lansdowne is said also to have been assisted by the 

 Hon. Charles Hamilton, whose place at Pain's Hill 

 in Surrey was, and is, one of the most successful 

 examples of the early landscape style in England. In 

 such experienced hands the grounds and the lake, 

 with the cascade below, assumed their charming 

 character. 



Britton, in his " Beauties of Wiltshire," is lost 

 in admiration of what he describes : " In this terres- 

 trial Elysium Nature has liberally dispensed her 

 favours, which her handmaid Art, under the dominion 

 of taste, has arranged and displayed in the most 

 appropriate and becoming manner. ... In 

 these grounds, no inanimate leaden statues, senseless 

 busts, nor ostentatiously unmeaning obelisks, obtrude 

 themselves on the eye of the wondering visitant : the 



Marquess judiciously observed, 'that those littlenesses 

 of workmanship should never be introduced where 

 the beauty and variety of the scenery are in them- 

 selves sufficient to excite admiration.' ' In relation 

 to which observations we may remark that the land- 

 scape gardeners did not despise, but rather welcomed, 

 such accessories as are referred to ; that leaden statues 

 are not more inanimate than statues must necessarily 

 be, and often have most happy effects in garden 

 adornment ; that busts are not always "senseless" in 

 garden design ; and that obelisks are not invariably 

 unmeaning. Indeed, some analogous garden adorn- 

 ments came later to the gardens at Bowood. Britton 

 particularly ascribes the Bowood cascade below the 

 lake to the Hon. Mr. Hamilton, who is said to have 

 taken his idea from a picture by Nicholas Poussin, and 

 to have been practically assisted by one Mr. Josiah 

 Lane, the whole being finished under the direction of 

 the first Marquess. " Thus completed, and daily 

 improving in wildness and picturesque effect, it stands 

 a flattering monument of the taste and judgment of 

 all who were concerned in its construction." Land- 

 scape art was sometimes taken as a suggestion for 

 garden design, though Whately, in his " Observations 

 on Modern Gardening" (1801), says that gardening 

 is "as superior to landskip-painting as a reality to a 

 representation." 



Our concern being with the gardens of Bowood, 

 we must forego the pleasure of writing anything 

 descriptive of the magnificent house or its contents. 

 Many of the first Marquess's art and literary treasures 

 were sold and scattered by his son and successor, his 

 valuable papers being secured, however, for national 

 uses, and they now form the well-known Lansdowne 

 MSS. in the British Museum. The third Marquess, 

 however, hair-brother of the last-named, regenerated 



