HISTORICAL NOTICES. 11 



racterized by regular forms and right lines, the last by varied 

 forms and flowing lines. 



A recurrence to the history of Gardening as well as to the 

 history of the fine arts, will afford abundant proof that in the 

 first stage, or infancy of these arts, while the perception of 

 their ultimate capabilities is yet crude and imperfect, man- 

 kind has in every instance been completely satisfied with the 

 mere exhibition of design or art. Thus in Sculpture, the 

 first statues were only attempts to imitate rudely the form of 

 a human figure, or in painting, to represent that of a tree : 

 the skill of the artist in effecting an imitation successfully, 

 Was sufficient to excite the astonishment and admiration of 

 those who had not yet made such advances as to enable them 

 to appreciate the superior beauty of expression. 



In laying out gardens, the practice from all antiquity, (un- 

 til in late times the superiority of natural beauty was dis. 

 covered,) has been to display the skill of the designer in ar- 

 ranging all the materials of nature, in artificial, regular, or 

 symmetrical forms. Walks and roads straight, beds square 

 and round, trees smoothly clipped and shorn into different 

 figures, these were the predominant characteristics of the 

 Ancient or Geometric Style. That person who possessed in 

 his grounds a luxuriant and graceful elm, its branches ele- 

 gantly sweeping the earth, and forming a varied outline 

 against the sky, saw no more than nature everywhere afford- 

 ed : but he, whose garden exhibited a cypress or a yew cut 

 by the shears into a four-sided pyramid of verdure, had at 

 least achieved something which nature has not been able to 

 do, and commanded a sort of respect for the excellence or 

 novelty of his art. This taste rendered more or less elegant, 

 continued throughout all Europe until about the year 1700. 

 The lavish expenditure in the royal and princely gardens of 



