DAWN OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 245 



70 broad." This again might be a description of the garden ' 

 still existing at Bramham, or of one of Switzer's plans. Belton 

 is another charming example of a garden of about this date which 

 although somewhat altered still retains several features observable 

 on these plans. 



Switzer was a pupil of London and Wise, and avowed himself 

 an admirer of Pope's ideas on gardens. He gives his views 

 fully in The Nobleman's, Gentleman's and Gardener's Recreation, 

 in 1715, published again with additions as Ichnographia 

 Rustica, in 1718, " by which title is meant the general Designing 

 and Distributing of County Seats into gardens woods Parks 

 Paddocks &c. : which I therefore call forest, or in more easie stile 

 Rural gardening." Here is a beginning of the end of 

 Formal Gardening. This " Le grand Manier," he goes on to 

 say, is " oppos'd to those crimping, diminutive and wretched 

 Performances we every where meet with. . . . The top of 

 these designs being in clipt plants, Flowers, and other trifling 

 Decorations ... fit only for little Town gardens., and not 

 for the expansive Tracts of the Country." In another place,* 

 he goes still further, and says his work is for the " Embellishment 

 of the whole Estate." The grounds to be "handsomely 

 divided by Avenues and Hedges . . . little walks and purling 

 streams . . and why is not a level easy walk of gravel or 

 sand shaded over with Trees and running thro' a corn field 

 or Pasture ground as pleasing as the largest walk in the most 

 magnificent garden one can think of? and why are not little 

 gardens and Basons of water as useful and surprising (and 

 indeed why not more so) at some considerable Distance from the 

 Mansion House as they are near it." The gardens I have quoted 

 above, and his own plans, however, do not go as far as admitting 

 cornfields, but the garden had ceased to be an enclosure, and 

 was already encroaching on the park and surrounding country. 

 The movement in its beginning was doubtless a good one, this 

 casting off some of the unnatural formality and stiffness that 

 gardens of the Dutch type had reached. The French gardens 

 that were copied gave a larger space to work upon, and involved 

 much more expense, thus the natural surroundings were made 



* Ed. of 1718. 



