§ 10, 11. ARRANGEMENT OF GARDENS. 1 



pentine walks ; avenues were cut down or disregarded ; the 

 formal beds, balustrades, and terraces of our old gardens were 

 looked upon with horror ; and every part of the ground about 

 a house was required to assume the varied aspect of nature. 

 At the same time, gravel- walks, themselves artificial, were 

 admitted ; and if the rage was not carried quite so far as to 

 allow weeds to grow instead of cultivated flowers, it was 

 equally inconsistent to have the (supposed) wildness of nature 

 about a house, which is a work of art, with its angularity and 

 formal lines. It was a vain endeavour to make two opposite 

 conditions coincide. To be in keeping with the aspect of 

 a house, the garden in its immediate vicinity should agree 

 with its artificial character ; and nothing can be more in ac- 

 cordance with the style of that work of art than an orna- 

 mental dressed garden, from which the gradation to the wild 

 country should be maintained by a decreasing formality in 

 the grounds as they leave the one and approach the other. 

 " Nothing, indeed," as Sir Walter Scott has well observed, is 

 " more the child of art than a garden ;" " and flights of steps, 

 balustrades, vases, and architectural ornaments," says Price, 

 " are not more unnatural, i.e. not more artificial, than the house 

 they are intended to accompany." The change from the old 

 dressed garden was the consequence of the fantastic caprices 

 of the Dutch (by whom it was caricatured) having been 

 brought into England. A reaction then took place in favour 

 of nature, and the opposite extreme of irregularity succeeded. 

 But it was equally studied and unnatural ; and as it was done 

 without regard to adaptability, and without a reason, the 

 result was the anomalous juxtaposition of two incompatible 

 ideas. The same is now attempted in the colouring of works 

 of art : and as it is equally inconsistent, it must equally lead 

 to error. 



11. The notion that the quantity or the arrangement of 

 colours is to be taken from nature is obviously erroneous ; and 



