PARK TIMBER 255 



admirably placed, and, had the details of his work been as 

 skilfully carried out as the main idea, little could have been 

 said against them. But whether from lack of opportunity, 

 or too close an observance of a fixed but narrow idea, these 

 clumps were made in such a formal manner, and composed 

 so largely of beech (a tree which aggravated their formality 

 rather than modified it), that they soon acquired, amongst 

 persons with true taste, an unenviable notoriety. 



Price's Essays fully exposed the tasteless character of 

 these clumps, and pointed out the anomaly of replacing the 

 formal style of landscape gardening, with its stately avenues 

 and tree-shaded canals, by one which was in reality just as 

 formal, but lacking the beauties which characterised its 

 predecessor. He ridiculed the invariable formation of a belt 

 round every park, and the planting of bald and circular 

 clumps at regular intervals in a detached and semi-discon- 

 nected manner ; the successive use of tame and uninteresting 

 curves on the banks of lakes and the edges of woods ; and 

 deprecated applying the same treatment or method of 

 laying out to all sorts and conditions of landscape and 

 varieties of ground. Whether Price's remarks were fully 

 appreciated at the time or not it is hard to say, but, judging 

 from the numerous examples of Brown's work, which are 

 still retained in their entirety, it is probable that true taste 

 was not a more common attribute of the average individual 

 a hundred years ago than it is to-day. Had they been 

 taken in hand in good time and judiciously thinned, these 

 clumps would have lost a good deal of their formality ; but 

 whatever thinning was done, was done in exactly the same 

 style as would have been appropriate for a plantation, namely, 

 simply a methodical process of regulating the distance from 

 tree to tree, so as to produce a regular distribution and uni- 

 form size. Had they been boldly cut into here and there, 

 leaving small thick clumps to stand at the margins and 

 develop untouched, that depth and irregularity in height and 

 density would have been produced which is so desirable 

 in all park clumps. But, so far as one can judge now, they 

 were allowed to grow untouched for a number of years, and 

 then thinned out with a view to develop individual trees, 

 rather than with the idea of giving the entire clump those 



