BEAUTIES OF THE ART. 29 



schools or modes by which it has previously been character- 

 ized, is but to be groping about in a dim twilight without 

 the power of knowing, even should we be successful in our 

 eftbrts, the real excellence of our production, or of judging of 

 its merit comparatively, as a work of taste and imagination. 



From the remarks which we have already made on the 

 geometric style of gardening, it will be seen that the ends in 

 view were to be attained in a merely mechanical manner, with 

 but little study or theory upon the subject. Nothing is more 

 easy than to level ground naturally uneven, or to make an 

 avenue by planting two rows of trees on either side of a broad 

 walk. Even in the more intricate and laboured specimens 

 of the ancient style, the results evince a fertility of invention 

 and odd conceits, rather than the exercise of the faculty of 

 taste, or imagination. Indeed, the ancient style, as commonly 

 practised, scarcely lays claim to be more than a mechanical 

 art, and the professors of the modern schools, conjointly with 

 men of genius and intellect, who have been its amateurs, 

 have raised Landscape Gardening to the rank it now occu- 

 pies as an art of taste. 



The earliest professors of modern Landscape Gardening, 

 ^have generally agreed upon two species of beauty, of which 

 the art is capable — variations no less certainly distinct on 

 the one hand than they are capable of intermingling and 

 combining on the other. These are general or natural, and 

 picturesque beauty : or to speak more definitely, the beauty 

 characterized by simple and flowing forms, and the beauty ex- 

 pressed by striking, irregular, spirited forms. 



The admirer of nature, as well as the lover of pictures and 

 engravings, will at once recall to mind examples of scenes 

 distinctly expressive of each of these kinds of beauty. In 

 nature, perhaps, some gently undulating plain covered Avith 



