72 



the topsj he conceived, thai it cairied witli it its own apology : 

 And such seems still to be the general opinion of planters, 

 down to the present period. 



These particulars, respecting the practice and machine of 

 Brown, at one time the supreme dictator of taste in land- 

 scape gardening in England, were obtained from two of his 

 pupils, the well-known Mr. Thomas White, who succeeded 

 to a great part of his business in the northern counties, and 

 Mr. James Robertson, who was sent down to Scotland, about 

 1750, to lay out Duddingston for the late Earl of Abercorn.* 

 This task Robertson peiformed with credit to himself, ex- 

 hil:)iting all the faults, and the excellencies of his master. 

 After this his first essay, and making some important changes 

 at Hopetoun House, and on the park at Dalkeith, he laid out 

 Livingston, Dalhousic, Niddry, Whim, Moredun, Culzean, 

 and other places in Mid-Lothian and Ayrshire ; which, with 

 the exception of Blairdrummond, were the earliest examples 

 of landscape gardening in Scotland.! 



At all, or most of these places, Robertson introduced the 

 knowledge of the transplanting machine, together with the 

 method of employing it, as interesting to landscape garden- 

 ing : But few particulars are recorded of the progress made 

 by either art, on this side of the Tweed. To a nation not 

 inconstant nor volatile, and certainly poor, when compared 

 with their present condition, it was no very easy nor grateful 

 imdertaking, to demohsh at once their favourite terraces, 

 their formal gardens, and other appendages of ancient gran- 

 deur, for a new-fangled art, of which Price wittily said, thfit 

 Horace had long since described it in three words ; for its 

 leading merit consists, in exchanging squares and parallelo- 

 giams, for circles and ellipses, 



Mutat quadrata rotundis.J 



+ NoTt XIV. \ Loudon'b Encyclopedia of Gardening, p. 79. 



J Essays on tlic Picturesque, Vol. 1. p. 230. 



