THE HISTORY OF GARDEN-MAKING 



morsels of forest appearance by the sides of those endless and 

 tiresome walks. 



"But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that followed, was 

 the destruction of walls for boundaries and the invention of fosses : 

 Tn attempt then deemed so astonishing that the common people 

 called them ' Ha ! ha's ! ' to express their surprise at finding a sudden 

 and unperceived check to their walk. No sooner was this siniple 

 enchantment made than levelling, mowmg, and rolling follow^/ 

 The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was 

 to be harmonised with the lawn within ; and the garden in its 

 turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might 

 assort with the wilder country without. At that moment 

 appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, 

 bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born 

 with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of 

 imperfect essays." 



The men referred to in this extract, Bridgman and Kent, played a 

 considerable part in the development of the new fashion. Bridgman 

 was gardener to George I., and was entrusted with the laying-out "of 

 several important places, among them Stowe, in Buckinghamshire. 

 His methods were not excessively advanced, for he had some respect 

 for the old style and did not try to break away too abruptly from 

 everything which had been accepted in the past. He abandoned, 

 however, the more extravagant form of tree-clipping, and therefore^ 

 must be counted among the reformers who desired to make a practi- 

 cal protest against the abuse of a time-honoured practice ; and by 

 his disinclination to " revert to the square precision of the foregoing^ 

 age," at least prepared the way for the great changes which were 

 imminent. 



William Kent was much more ambitious and broke far more definitely 

 with the past. He was in many ways a remarkable man, following 

 several professions, though in none of them did he rise to real 

 eminence. In his youth he was apprenticed to a coach-builder, but 

 soon after the beginning of the eighteenth century he came from 

 Yorkshire, where he was born, to London to follow the profession of 

 a portrait and historical painter. There he found many patrons and 

 achieved so large a measure of success, that in 1710 he was able to 

 go to Italy to study. In 171 9 he returned to England with Lord 

 Burlington, in whose house he resided till his death, in 1748, and by 

 whose influence he obtained several court appointments, and a con- 

 siderable amount of private work. As an architect he was not 

 unsuccessful, for in this branch of art he showed more real capacity 

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