118 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



ral or formal, though much less grand and simple than 

 straight lines ; and that independently of monotony, the 

 continual and indiscriminate use of such curves has an 

 appearance of affectation and studied grace, that always cre- 

 ates disgust. 



Kent is entitled to the same praise as other reformers, who 

 have broken through narrow and long established prejudices, 

 and thereby prepared the way for more liberal notions. Yet 

 it must be owned that like other reformers, he and his fol- 

 lowers demolished, without distinction, the costly and mag- 

 nificent decorations of past times, and among them many 

 things that still deserved to be respected and adopted. 

 Though a painter by profession, he seems to have entirely 

 overlooked all those principles by which the great masters 

 have been governed. No professor of high reputation seems 

 for some time to have appeared after Kent, till, at length, 

 that his bald and monotonous system might be carried to its 

 ne plus ultra, arose the famous Mr. Brown. It is very un- 

 fortunate that this great legislator of our national taste, 

 whose laws still remain in force, should not have received 

 from nature or have acquired by education, more enlarged 

 ideas. Mr. Brown was bred a gardener, and having nothing 

 of the mind or the eye of a painter, he formed his style, or 

 rather his plan, upon the model of a parterre ; and transferred 

 its minute beauties, its little clumps, knots and patches of 

 flowers, the oval belt that surrounds it, and all its twists and 

 circum-crancums, to the great scale of nature. 



We have indeed made but a poor progress by changing 

 the formal, but simple and majestic avenue, for the then 

 circular verge called a belt ; and the unpretending ugliness 

 of the straight, for the affected sameness of the serpentine 

 canal. The great distinguishing feature of modern improve- 

 ment is the clump ; whose name, if the first letter was taken 

 awajT, would most accurately describe its form and effect. 

 Natural groupes, being formed by trees of different ages and 

 sizes, and at different distances from each other, often too of 

 a mixture of timber trees with thorns, hollies and others of 

 inferior growth, are full of variety in their outlines ; and from 



