IV THE LANDSCAPE SCHOOL 87 



and elsewhere, and Scotch and English gardeners 

 were in demand all over Europe to renovate 

 gardens in the English manner. It is not an 

 exhilarating thought that in the one instance in 

 which English taste in a matter of design has 

 taken hold on the Continent, it has done so with 

 such disastrous results. 



It is not to be supposed, however, that this 

 new view of gardening took immediate and 

 complete possession of England. Fashions 

 travelled slowly in the eighteenth century, and 

 many a formal garden in provincial towns and 

 country places was laid out in the older style 

 as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. 

 The terrace and great staircase of Prior Park, 

 near Bath, designed by Wood, the architect, is 

 one of the finest examples still in existence in Eng- 

 land of garden architecture ; and the terrace at 

 Brympton, in Somersetshire, is said to have been 

 constructed in the early part of last century. 

 Moreover, men of real cultivation began to resent 

 the destruction of places which for them, at least, 

 were instinct with scholarly associations, and the 

 cant and fallacies of the landscapist were too 

 transparent to pass unchallenged. Sir Uvedale 

 Price, a man of independent views and consider- 

 able intelligence, was perhaps the first to see 

 the error of his ways. In his essay on The 

 Decorations near the House, he tells of an 

 old garden of his own, in two divisions, all 

 walled in, with terraces and summer-house and 



