INTRODUCTION. 3 



possible for the wealthy to live outside towns in unfortified houses. 

 Up to the middle of the last century all progress made was in 

 fetters of artificiality, formal and imitative in respect of the art 

 features. The garden contiguous to the house was laid out for 

 utility or for pleasure with a purpose of distinguishing it from the 

 surrounding scenery ; and it was natural that the same feeling which 

 gave the character to the house should also prevail in the garden. 

 Every possible appearance of uniformity was bestowed on the 

 enclosed ground. Regularity and order contrasted with Nature's 

 aspect outside. Admiration was courted by means of regu- 

 larity, and by marking to the spectator the labour, design, and 

 expense bestowed on the garden. Moreover, in any extension, 

 duplication of lines was aimed at rather than the introduction of a 

 new design. But, as the eighteenth century came on, the newer 

 influences were strengthening ; causes produced effects, which in 

 their turn became causes of advance, and with the appreciation of 

 Nature's beauties in scenery, the art that was to minister to the 

 better feeling became more definite in its tendency, until the present 

 development of the Art of Landscape Gardening truthfully and 

 distinctively styled English has been reached. Our love of natural 

 beauty has been greatly fostered by the modern systems of easy 

 travelling, by peace at home and by the stupendous accretion of 

 private as well as of national wealth. It is startling to note in 

 how narrow a strip of our history, these conditions have been 

 established completely. The Victorian period has these facts on 

 its records. 



Up to the commencement of the eighteenth century, landscape 

 gardening was mostly the work of architects ; and it was characterised 

 by formal art features, by intricacy of design in parts, and by 

 treatment of the ground as a plane surface. That ideal of beauty 

 resulted in a feeling that Nature had been pushed, and coerced,. 



