plantations 215 



be beautiful. The first requisite is irregularity. 

 That a mixture of trees and underwood should form 

 a long straight line, can never be natural; and a suc- 

 cession of easy sweeps and gentle rounds, each 

 a portion of a greater or less circle, composing alto- 

 gether a line literally serpentine, is if possible worse. 

 It is but a number of regularities put together in 

 a disorderly manner, and equally distant from the 

 beautiful both of art and of nature. The true beauty 

 of outline consists more in breaks than in sweeps; 

 rather in angles than in rounds; in variety, not in 

 succession. 



"The outline of a wood is a continued line, and 

 small variations do not save it from the insipidity of 

 sameness. One deep recess, one bold prominence, has 

 more effect than twenty little irregularities. That 

 one divides the line into parts, but no breach is 

 thereby made in its unity; a continuation of wood 

 always remains; the form of it only is altered, and 

 the extent is increased. The eye, which hurries to 

 the extremity of whatever is uniform, delights to 

 trace a varied line through all its intricacies, to pause 

 from stage to stage, and to lengthen the progress. 

 The parts must not, however, on that account, be 

 multiplied, till they are too minute to be interesting, 

 and so numerous as to create confusion. A few large 

 parts should be strongly distinguished in their forms, 

 their directions, and their situations; each of them 

 may afterwards be decorated with subordinate varie- 

 ties; and the mere growth of the plants will occasion 



