194 



celebrated artist, which have sufl'eiecl so much obloquy, he 

 may rely upon it, that he is possessed of a treasure, which 

 cannot be too highly prized, for the purpose in question. 

 With his permission, then, I will beg leave to give a cursory 

 idea of my own transplanting nurseries, and of the superior 

 materials, out of which they were formed. 



About forty years since, when the style of Brown was in 

 high fashion and repute, tliis place was modernized and laid 

 out by an eminent landscape gardener, well known in Scot- 

 land, namely, Mr. Thomas White, one of the most ingenious 

 of his pupils. With a better education than his master 

 could boast, with a more correct taste, and a more vivid 

 fancy. White had a juster discernment of the true style, in 

 which the principles of artificial should be applied to the im- 

 provement of real landscape. He was a superior draughts- 

 man, and possessed a thorough knowledge of the principles 

 of design ; and had it not been for the professional trammels, 

 by which he was confined, he probably Avould have antici- 

 pated, as well as illustrated in his own designs, those more 

 correct notions of park-scenery which Sir Uvedale Price and 

 Mr. Knight afterwards had the merit of bringing into no- 

 tice.* As it was. White rather yielded to, than approved of 

 the fashion of the day : accordingly, he gave a belt and 

 clumps to all the new places he laid out, and sometimes to 

 the old ones, whicli he so ingeniously improved. 



Although my little Park was not deficient in these neces- 

 sary appendages, it must not be imagined, that such formal 

 plantations, and especially the clumps, were ever intended to 

 be permanetit, by this able artist. On the contrary, they 

 were meant to act as kindly and sheltering masses to a very 

 open subject, and as the only means of protecting and getting 

 up good single trees, and loose dispositions of wood. I 

 therefore trenched the ground by his advice, and took from 



* Note I. 



