MAY. 



213 



called, takes away all natural enrichment, and adds more of 

 its own; unless, indeed, meagre and formal clumps of trees, 

 and still more formal patches of shrubs, may be called enrich- 

 ment. 



"Why this art," remarks Mr. Knight, "has been called 

 landscape gardening, perhaps he who gave it the title may 

 explain : I can see no reason, unless it be the efFicacy which 

 it has shown in destroying landscapes, in which indeed it 

 seems to be infallible, not one complete painter's composition 

 being, I believe, to be found in any of the numerous and 

 many of them beautiful and picturesque spots, which it has 

 visited in different parts of this island." 



To those readers who are pleased with bold and original 

 views, and. sagacious, metaphysical speculations, there are 

 few works of the kind that will afford more interest than the 

 " Analytical Inquiry," from which we have compiled only 

 those ideas that relate directly or indirectly to landscape gar- 

 dening. 



EUROPEAN PARKS, NO. V. 



BY HOWARD DANIELS, ARCHITECT, N. Y. 

 THE LONDON PARKS. 



Hyde Park contains 349 acres of fine, high and undulating 

 land, admirably adapted to landscape gardening purposes, but, 

 instead of being a park in fact, it is nothing but a gigantic 

 cow pasture, with here and there an old decaying or dead 

 elm, or sycamore, tree, in which the aristocracy of the neigh- 

 borhood pasture their cows. 



I was so disappointed in this park that it was not until I 

 had found the site of the Exhibition building of 1851 that I 

 could really persuade myself that this was the far-famed 

 Hyde Park about which I had read and heard so much. 



There is a long canal-like sheet of water, which is neither 

 natural nor artificial in its character, covering fifty acres of 

 land, called the Serpentine, the upper portion of which is in 



