531 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 





HUmry. more to b attributed to the inhabitants than to the 

 ayre." In an inedited account of a Tour in 1634, also 

 quoted by Mr. Walker, ( Trans. R. I. A.) Bishop Ush. 

 er's palace is said to have a " pretty neat garden." 



Some of the largest sculptured evergreens in Ireland 

 are at Bangor, in the county of Down ; and at Thomas- 

 town, in the county of Tipperary, are the remains of a 

 hanging garden, formed on the side of a hill, in one 

 corner of which is a verdant amphitheatre, once the 

 scene of occasional dramatic exhibitions. 

 II. Blissington gardens, if tradition may be relied on, 

 were laid out during the reign of James the II. by an 

 I'.nglish gentleman, who had left his estate at Byfleet 

 in Sussex, to escape the persecution of Cromwell. The 

 first forcing house is supposed to have been erected in 

 these gardens; and the first plant stove at Moyra, in 

 the succeeding reign, by Sir Archibald Rawdon, an an- 

 cestor of the Marquis of Hastings. ' 



In king William's time, knifts of flowers, curious 

 edgings of box, topiary works, grassy slopes, and other 

 characteristics of the Dutch style, came into notice. 

 Rowe and Bullein, Englishmen, who had successively 

 nurseries at Dublin, were, in these days, the principal 

 rural artists of Ireland ; though Switzer and Laurence, 

 as -well as Batty Langley, occasionally visited these 

 countries. 



Arrange- Of the state of country seats in Ireland during the 

 ^^ "^ l ^ centuries, we are not sufficiently ac- 

 qua'nted to be able to give any general outline. If 

 tradition is to be credited, they were more in the Eng- 

 lish than in the Scotch manner ; and, as might be ex- 

 pected, inferior to both in respect to domestic conve- 

 niencies. 



Having now completed an historical outline of the 

 ancient style, or what may be, with equal propriety, 

 called French or Roman gardening, in Europe, we shall 

 proceed to our next epoch, which embraces the modern 

 style. 



SECT. IV. Chinese Gardening. 



Fourth VVe have chosen this period to introduce what is 



epoch, known of the art of gardening among the Chinese ; not 



A.p. 1700. on iy because we have now brought down our history 



gardening. * tne t ' me '* ^ rst rece i ye d the attention of Europeans, 

 but also because a previous account of it will serve 

 greatly to facilitate our investigations into the origin 

 of the English style. 



The first authentic notice of Chinese gardening re- 

 ceived in Europe, is contained in the well known 

 " Lettres Edtfiantes et Cnrieuses,'' &c. in a letter dated 

 Pekin, 1743, giving an account of the emperor's gar- 

 dens there. Is was translated by Mr. Spence, under the 

 fictitious title of Sir Harry Beaumont, whom Lord Wai- 

 pole describes as having " both taste and zeal for the pre- 

 sent style ;'' and was published in Dodsley's collection in 

 1?6 1 . The chief features in the Emperor's gardens were 

 buildings, mock towns, villages, artificial hills, vallies, 

 lakes, and canals ; serpentine bridges, covered by colon- 

 nades and resting places, with a farm and fields, where 

 his imperial majesty is accustomed to patronize rural in- 

 dustry, by putting his hand to the plough ; or, as it 

 has been otherwise expressed, " to play at agriculture 

 once a-year." 



But some idea of the Chinese style must have been 

 known from the verbal accounts of Chinese merchants 

 or travellers, nearly a century before. A proof of 

 this is to be found in Sir William Temple's Essay, 

 written about the middle of the 17th century. He in- 



2 



forms us, thc.t though he recommends regularity in gar. History. 

 dens, yet, for any thing he knows, there may be more 

 beauty in such as are wholly'irregular. " Something 

 of this sort," he says, " I have seen in some places, 

 but heard more of it from others, who have lived much 

 among the Chinese." Referring to their studied irregu- 

 larity, he adds, " When they find this sort of beauty 

 in perfection, so as to hit the eye, they say it is sliara- 

 ivadgi, an expression signifying fine or admirable." It 

 appears from this passage, that the Chinese style had 

 not only been known, but imitated in England nearly 

 a century previously to the publication of the Jesuits' 

 Letters, and, at least, 60 years before Kent's time. Sir 

 William Temple retired to Moor Park is 1680, and 

 died in the year 1700. 



The first detailed account of this style, however, was 

 brought to England by Sir William Chambers; and pub- 

 lished in an essay in the appendix to his " Designs of 

 Chinese Buildings, &c. in 1 757 ; and at greater length 

 in his " Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, in 1772; and 

 commended, as G. Mason observes, by so good a judge 

 as Gray. (Life, p. 387.) 



This author avows, that his information is not derived 

 entirely from personal examination, but chiefly from the 

 conversation of a celebrated Chinese painter; and it 

 has been very reasonably conjectured, that he has 

 drawn, in some cases, on his own imagination, in order 

 to enhance the reader's opinion of Chinese taste, with 

 the laudable end of improving that of his own country. 

 In his Essay of 1757, which was published in French 

 as well as English, and was soon translated, as Hirsch- 

 field informs us, into German, he says, " the Chinese 

 taste in laying out gardens is good, and what we have 

 for some time past been aiming at in England." With 

 the exception of their formal and continual display of 

 garden buildings, and their attempts of raising cha- 

 racters, not only picturesque and pleasing, but also of 

 horror, surprise, and enchantment, Sir William's di- 

 rections, especially in his second work, will apply to 

 the most improved conceptions of planting and form- 

 ing pieces of water for the modern style ; or, in other 

 words, for creating scenery such as will always resem- 

 ble, and often might be mistaken for that of nature. 



By perusing the work of Sir.William Chambers, some 

 idea may be formed as to the probability of its having 

 given rise to the English manner, and how far the two 

 varieties of gardening still agree. 



There can be no doubt of the entire originality of 

 their style ; though it may reasonably be conjectured, 

 that their taste for picturesque beauty is not exactly so 

 conformable to European ideas on that subject as Sir 

 William would lead us to believe. At all events, it is 

 carried to such an extreme, so encumbered with decep. 

 tions, and what we would not hesitate to consider pue- 

 rilities ; and there appears throughout o little reference 

 to utility, that the more mature and chastened taste of 

 Europeans cannot sympathise with it. It is indeed, al- 

 together a peculiar taste, undoubtedly perfectly na- 

 tural to that people, and therefore not to be subjected 

 to European criticism. 



" The Chinese gardens," observes Lord Walpole, 

 " are as whimsically irregular as European gardens 

 were formally uniform and unvaried ; nature in them 

 is as much avoided as in those of our ancestors." In 

 allusion to those of the emperor's palace, described in 

 the Leltres Edtfiantes, as of vast extent, and which con- 

 tained 200 palaces all painted and varnished, he says, 

 " this pretty gaudy scene is the work of caprice and 

 whim, and, when we reflect on their buildings, pre. 



