BEAUTIES OF THE ART. 33 



see them, where there is one who would prefer a cottage ia 

 a highly irregular and picturesque valley, or a castle on a 

 rocky crag ; though the latter may, to certain minds, be a 

 thousand times more enchanting. 



After having: familiarized ourselves with the leading ex- 

 pressions of beauty in wild scenery, the question arises in 

 what manner is nature to be imitated in Landscape Garden- 

 ing ? To produce an actual fac-simile of nature, in the grounds 

 of a country residence, appears to have been the sole idea of 

 some of the early writers on the natural style. These, tired 

 of the formalities of Geometric Gardening, almost ran into 

 the opposite extreme, of rendering the pleasure grounds like 

 a wild dingle, forgetting that the principles of imitation com- 

 mon to the other fine arts, are, to a certain extent, equally 

 applicable to this. And that, although fac-simile imitations 

 of nature are really capable of affording much rational pleas- 

 ure, yet they have no claim to be considered as the production 

 of an imitative fine art. The pleasure they give rise to, being 

 precisely that afibrded by natural scenery. 



M. Q,uatremere de Cluincy, has defined the end of imita- 

 tion to be, " to present to the senses and the mind, through 

 the intervention of the fine arts, images which, in all the 

 different forms of iniitatioti, shall fur7iish an aggregate 

 of perfection and ideal beauty to which particular models 

 afford no eqiialP* In this sentence may be found the true 

 nature of imitation in Landscape Gardening, only partially 

 known and acted upon by its earlier professors. 



The most elevated kind of beauty in landscapes, of what- 

 ever description, is undoubtedly that of expression. And 

 the highest imitative effects of the art, therefore, consist in 

 arranging the materials, so as to create emotions of grace, 



* Essay on Imitation in the Fine Arts, p. 150. 



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