426 Dowfiing's Landscape-Gardening. 



appreciate her more free and spirited charms. So, also, there are, perhaps, a 

 thousand who admire the elegant forms and the undulating outlines which pre- 

 dominate in the park or pleasure-grounds, as we generally see them, where 

 there is one who would prefer a cottage in 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 familiarised ourselves with the leading expressions of beauty 

 in wild scenery, the question arises. In what manner is nature to be imitated 

 in landscape-gardening ? 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 

 common 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 pleasure, yet the}' have no claim to be considered as 

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

 precisely that afforded by natural scenery. 



" M. Quatremere de Quincy has defined the end of imitation to be, * to 

 present to the senses and the mind, through tlie iritei-vention ofthejine arts, images 

 which, in all the different forms of imitation, shall furnish an aggregate of perfec- 

 tion and ideal beauty to ivhich particular models afford no equal. ^ * In this sen- 

 tence 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 whatever description, 

 is undoubtedly that of expi-ession ; and the highest imitative effects of the 

 art, therefore, consist in arranging the materials, so as to create emotions of 

 grace, elegance, picturesqueness, or grandeur,, joined with unity, harmony, and 

 variety, more distinct and more forcible than are suggested by natural scenery, 

 producing, by this means, intellectual gratification, separate and distinct from 

 that arising from the mere admiration of forms or materials employed. 



" The beau ideal in landscape-gardening, as a fine art, appears to us to be 

 embraced in the creation of scenery expressive of a peculiar kind of beauty, 

 as the elegant or picturesque, the materials of which are, to a certain extent, 

 different from those in wild nature, being composed of the floral and arbori- 

 cultural riches of all climates, as far as possible, — uniting in the same scene 

 a richness and a variety never to be found in any one portion of nature ; — 

 a scene characterised as a work of art, by the variety of the materials, as 

 foreign trees, plants, &c., and by the polish and keeping of the grounds, in the 

 natural style, as distinctly as by the uniform and symmetrical arrangement, in 

 the ancient style. 



" A fac-simile imitation of nature in gardening, that is, a scene like wild 

 nature, in which only wild trees, shrubs, and plants are employed, and which 

 is precisely like wild nature, produces pleasure only as it deceives us, and 

 appears to be nature itself An artistical imitation affords pleasure to the 

 mind, not only by the expressions of natural beauty which we discover in it, 

 but by the more novel and choicer forms in which they are displayed, and by 

 the tasteful art apparent in the arrangement. The relative merits of the two 

 may be illustrated, by comparing the first to the counterfeit of the human 

 figure in wax, which, at a short distance, may be thought real, and the last, to 

 the painted landscape or the marble statue. The two latter are no less imita- 

 tions of nature than the former, but they are expressive and elegant imita- 

 tions only, which are never to be mistaken for tlie originals, as in the case of 

 the wax figure.-f- 



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



-j- " ' Thus, there is a beauty of nature and a beauty of art. To copy the 

 beauty of nature cannot be called l)cing an artist, in the highest sense of tlie 



