CHAPTER XII. 



"... So will I rest in hope 

 To see wide plains, fair trees, and lawney slope; 

 'l"he morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers; 

 C Icar streams, smooth lakes, and overlooking' towers." 



Keats. 



" Is there anything more shocking than a stiff re.'^^ular garden?"* 

 What a revolution of the taste in gardening these words 

 reveal I Yet such a CDmplete change in fashion had taken 

 place, that this was the opinion held by all the garden designers 

 of the latter half of the eighteenth century. Nor were they 

 content to lay out new gardens to suit the prevailing style, 

 but they freely destroyed, and abused, where they could not 

 obliterate, the work of former generations. The leader of this 

 new departure in garden design was Kent. He was the 

 successor of Bridgeman, and at first made gardens on the same 

 plan. Soon, however, he went so far beyond him as to entirely 

 leave the formal garden, and substitute for it the landscape 

 stvle. Walpole considers the first step towards this revolution 

 to have been the introduction of the sunk fence. And certainly 

 he there touched the key-note, for as soon as walls and 

 enclosures were dispensed wit'.i, any piece of natural and rural 

 scenery could be included in the garden. "The capital stroke," t 

 he wrote, "the leading step to all that has followed, was (I 

 believe the first thought was Brid,ceman'>t the destruction of 



* Batty Langlev, New Principles of Gariieiii)ig, 1728. 



t Essay on Modern Gardening. By Horace Walpole, 1785. 



