212 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE 



than as beautiful tints, forms or varieties of light and shadow 

 would, seen in any indifferent objects. The author next 

 proceeds to apply these principles to the modern style of gar- 

 dening ; I shall not attempt to follow him in all his observa- 

 tions. 



After ridiculing the regular square edifices so common in 

 his day, the author remarks that in the old architectural sys- 

 tem of laying out grounds, the house being surrounded by 

 gardens as uniform as itself, and only seen through vistas, at 

 right angles, every visible accompaniment was in unison with 

 it, and the systematic regularity of the whole discernible 

 from every point of sight. But when, according to the mod- 

 ern fashion, all around i's levelled and thrown open, and the 

 poor square edifice exposed alone, or with the accompaniment 

 only of its regular wings and portico, amidst spacious lawns 

 interspersed with irregular clumps, or masses of wood and 

 sheets of water, there cannot be a more melancholy sight. 

 It neither associates nor harmonizes with anything : and as 

 the beauties of symmetry, which might appear in its regular- 

 ity, are only perceived when that regularity is seen, it appears 

 neither quite regular nor quite irregular ; but with that sort 

 of lame and defective uniformity, which we see in an animal 

 that has lost a limb. 



The view from one of these solitary mansions is still more 

 dismal than that towards it ; for at the hall door, a boundless 

 extent of open lawn presents itself in every direction, which 

 the despairing visitant must traverse, before he can get into 

 any change of scenery; and to complete the congruity of the 

 whole, the clumps with which this monotonous tract is dot- 

 ted, and the winding stream or canal by which it is intersected, 

 are made as neat and 'determinate as ever the ancient gardens 

 were. The latter were professedly a work of art, and an ap- 

 pendage to the house, and the neatness and even formality of 

 architecture were its proper characteristics. When the ter- 

 races and borders were intermixed with vines and flowers, as 

 in some old English gardens, the mixture of splendor, rich- 

 ness and neatness was beautiful and pleasing in the highest 

 degree. But the modern art of landscape gardening, as it is 



