GENERAL PEINCIPLES. 19 



or applause of ourselves or others. To imitate nature in such a way as that 

 the object produced should be mistaken for nature, could never excite much 

 approbation for the artist, because its very perfection, by deceiving the 

 spectator into a belief of its reality, would prevent it from being considered 

 as a work of art. On the contrary, when an object is imitated in a totally 

 different material from that in which it appears in nature, and the imitation 

 is successful, the applause of the spectator is great in proportion to the degree 

 of skill displayed. 



Thus, suppose a person to succeed in making artificial flowers of coloured 

 paper so like real flowers as to deceive the spectator, and another person to 

 carve an imitation of such flowers in wood or stone, what would be the merit 

 which the common sense of mankind would assign to each of these two 

 persons? The artificial flower-maker would be considered in the light of a 

 manufacturer, or mechanical producer, or repeater of an object, while the 

 carver in wood or stone would be considered as possessing a superior degree 

 of mind, from his having produced the resemblance of a flower in a material 

 so unlike the texture of flowers as wood or stone : he would, in short, be con- 

 sidered an arti&t. 



29. The principle of the recognition of art is thus, we think, proved to be 

 founded in human nature: it is recognisable in every description of human 

 improvement ; and it is no less essential in the case of the fine arts than in 

 those of common life, or of any of the mechanical arts and manufactures. 

 We have considered it necessary to insist on this principle here, in order that 

 our readers may go along with us when we come to make the application of 

 it to the modern style of landscape-gardening. This style is said to be an 

 imitation of nature ; and, in consequence of this expression, many persons 

 have argued in favour of imitating nature so closely as to produce scenes 

 which might be mistaken for,natural ones ; or, in other words, for those which 

 result from causes operating independently of man. If we are right in our 

 principle, however, such fac-simile imitations of nature, even of the most 

 beautiful nature that can be selected, constitute but a very inferior style of 

 art ; and the landscape gardener who should produce a piece of water 

 surrounded by grass and trees, with its margin fringed by bushes and water- 

 plants, and varied by gravel and stones, in such a natural-looking manner 

 that it might be selected for copying from by a landscape-painter, and mis- 

 taken by him for a piece of natural scenery, has exactly the same pretensions 

 to the character of an artist as a manufacturer of artificial flowers or wax 

 figures, who shovdd produce a flower of tinted paper, or a dressed figure of a 

 man or boy, so complete a fac-simile of nature that a botanical painter, or a 

 cursory observer, might be desirous of making a drawing from the one, and 

 of speaking to the other, believing both to be alive. 



30. The rules which, in landscape-gardenmg, may be derived from the 

 principle of the recogiiition of art ave numerous. With respect to ground, it 

 must either be reduced to levels, or slopes of regular curvatures, as in the 

 ancient style ; or, in the modern style, to polished curvatures and unduli.- 

 tions, which shall be, either from their beauty of form, or from their clothing 

 of herbage, distinguishable at first sight from the natural surface of the ground 

 by which the work of art, that is, the lawn, park, or pleasure-ground, is sur- 

 rounded. Wood, if the common trees of the locality are employed, raubt be 

 either planted in lines, or massed in geometrical figures; but, if foreign trees 



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