158 Gardening as an Art of Design and Taste. 



principal purpose of that essential portion of the garden devoted 

 to the uses of the kitchen and the table. 



In these parts of the garden, then, which are destined 

 immediately for the gratification, not of the eye, but merely 

 of the palate, it is only in proportion as we more fully deviate 

 from the desultory and confused dispositions of simple nature, — 

 firstly, by separating the different species of esculent plants, not 

 only from their useless neighbours, but from each other ; and, 

 secondly, by confining the vegetables thus classed in those 

 symmetric and measured compartments which enable us with 

 greater ease to discover, to approach, and to improve each 

 different species in the precise way most congenial to its peculiar 

 requisites, — that we more fully attain that first of intellectual 

 beauties, which, in every production, whether of nature or of 

 art, resides in the exact correspondence between the end we 

 purpose and the means we employ. Nay, if it be true that 

 contrast and variety of colours and of forms are among the 

 most essential ingredients of visible beauty, we may say that 

 even this species of sensible charm is greatly increased in the 

 aspect of a countr)', by the opposition to the more widely diffused 

 but more vague shades and outlines of the unsymmetrised sur- 

 rounding landscape, offered by the more vivid hues and more 

 distinct forms of the gay mosaic work of nicely classed and 

 symmetrised vegetables which clothe these select spots. 



Even where the general unadorned scenery is as bold and 

 majestic as in Switzerland, or as rich and luxuriant as in Sicily, 

 the eye with rapture beholds the variety, and enjoys the relief, 

 from the vaster and sublimer features of rude nature, offered by 

 the professed art of a neat little patch of ground, whether field, 

 orchard, or garden, symmetrically distributed. It looks like a 

 small but rich gem, a topaz, an emerald, or a ruby, sparkling 

 amidst vast heaps of ruder ore ; or rather like a rich carpet 

 spread out over a corner of the valley. It appears thus incon- 

 trovertible, that, in that part at least of the garden which is 

 immediately intended for utility, we incidentally produce not 

 only greater intellectual, but greater visible, beauty, by not con- 

 fining ourselves to the desultory forms of unguided nature, but 

 by admitting the more symmetric outlines of avowed art : and it 

 therefore only remains to be enquired, whether in that other and 

 different part of the artificial grounds in later times added to 

 the former, which is directly intended for beauty, and which we 

 therefore call the pleasure-grounds, we shall really produce 

 more beauty, intellectual or visible, or, in other words, more 

 pleasure to the mind or eye, by only employing the powers of 

 art in a covert and unavowed way, in still only preserving the 

 closest resemblance to the indeterminable and irregular forms of 

 mere nature; or by adhibiting her additional resources in a more 



