544 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



History, translated into English by D. Malthus, Esq. and is 

 sp ~r" m ' well known for its eloquent descriptions of romantic 

 and picturesque scenes. Ermenonville (still in the 

 same family, but now rather neglected, ) appears to have 

 been laid out in a chaste and picturesque style, and, in 

 this respect, to have been somewhat different, and su- 

 perior to cotemporary English places. Useless build- 

 ings were avoided, and the picturesque effect of every 

 object carefully considered, not in exclusion of, but in 

 connection with their utility. There is hardly an un- 

 exceptionable principle, or even direction referring to 

 landscape gardening, laid down in the course of the 

 work ; and in all that relates to the picturesque, it is 

 remarkable how exactly it corresponds with the ideas of 

 Mr. Price. M. Girardin, high in military rank, had pre- 

 viously visited every part of Europe, and paid particu- 

 lar attention to England ; and, before publishing his 

 work, he had the advantage of consulting that of 

 Wheatley, from which hie has occasionally borrowed, as 

 well as the writings of Chambers, Shenstone, and Gil- 

 pin. He professes, however, that his object is neither 

 to create English gardens, nor Chinese gardens ; and 

 less to divide his grounds into pleasure grounds, parks, 

 or ridings, than to produce interesting landscapes, 

 " paysages interessans,'' &c. He received the pro- 

 fessional aid of J. M. Morel, the Kent of France, 

 who afterwards published Theorie des Jardins, and 

 probably that of his guest Rousseau, who seems to 

 nave composed the advertisement to his book. M. 

 Magellan, in the Gazette Litteraire de I' Europe fat 1778, 

 in giving some account of the last days of Rousseau, who 

 died at Ermenonville, and was buried in the island of 

 Poplars there, informs us, that M. Girardin kept a 

 band of musicians, who constantly perambulated the 

 grounds, making concerts, sometimes in the woods, 

 and at other times on the waters, and in scenes calcu- 

 lated for particular seasons, so as to draw the attention 

 of visitors to them at the proper time. At night they 

 returned to the house, and performed in a room adjoin- 

 ing the hall of company. Madame Girardin and her 

 daughters, were clothed in common brown stuff, en 

 Amazones, with black hats, while the young men wore 

 " habillements le plus simple et les plus propres a les 

 faire confondre avec les enfans du campagnards," &c. 



The next example of English gardening in France, 

 is of a very different description, and is that of M. Wa- 

 telet, the author of an Essai sur les Jardins, which ap- 

 "* appeared in 1774. M. Watelet's garden was situated 

 in the suburbs of Paris, and contained about four acres, 

 varied by buildings, grottos, temples, and inscriptions ; 

 and was, on the whole, more in the Chinese style than 

 in that of Kent or Shenstone. The author, who professes 

 to take utility for the basis of his art, seems to have 

 felt something wanting in this particular to his temples 

 and altars; and is ridiculed by Hirschfield, (Sur les 

 Jardins, torn. i. p. 168,) for proposing occasionally " de 

 faire paroitre aupres des temples, des autels, des arcs de 

 triomphe, &c. une troupe de pantomimes vfitues suivant 



le costume necessaire imitant des ceremonies, faisant 



des sacrifices, allant porterdes offrandes," &c. The object 

 of such as attempt English gardening in France on a small 

 scale, is still, more to imitate the garden of M. Watclet, 

 than the " paysages interessans" of Girardin. In much 

 .Morel better taste is the Theorie des Jardins of J. M. Morel, 

 already mentioned, and published in 1776. It appears 

 from this judicious writer, that very little had been done 

 in France up to the period in which he wrote. One place 

 only is mentioned besides Ermenonville as worthy of 

 attention. Most of the attempts were made on a small 



scale near Paris, in Watelet's manner. Soon after this, " History.' 

 Delille's celebrated poem, Les Jardins, made its appear- S ~-Y~*' 

 ance, and is perhaps a more unexceptionable perform- Ddllle - 

 ance than The English Garden of Mason. Th& French 

 indeed, have written much better on gardening and 

 agriculture than they have practised, a circumstance 

 which may be accounted for, from the general concen- 

 tration of wealth and talent in the capital, where books 

 are more frequent than examples ; and of professional 

 reputation in that country, depending more on what a 

 man has written than on what he has done. It does 

 not appear that English gardening -was ever at all no- 

 ticed by the court of France. The garden of Mousseau, Gardens of 

 before the revolution, the property of the Duke of Or- the nm of 

 leans, was laid out in a romantic and irregular style, as Louis xvl> 

 were some scenes in that of the Petit Trianon, especial- 

 ly in the lower part of the grounds, now occupied by 

 ruins, water, and a cottage, and in their kind very pictu- 

 resque. Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, formerly a 

 retreat of Count d'Artois, was laid out in the same 

 taste. 



During the consulate, Malmaison, the residence of Consulate. 

 Buonaparte, was laid out avowedly in the English man- 

 ner by a Scotch gardener ; and was afterwards stocked 

 with every variety of trees and shrubs from this coun- 

 try. The Grand and Petit Trianon have also been 

 partially subjected to this style, and more especially the 

 latter. The dry arenarious soil of these places, joined 

 to the great heats in summer, is particularly unfavour- 

 able to the production of what constitutes one of the 

 finest beauties of English gardening a velvet turf; 

 which in no country or soil is produced in such perfec- 

 tion as on the strong loams and under the temperate cli- 

 mate of England. This, we learned on the spot, was the 

 chief drawback to Ermenonville when in its greatest 

 perfection, and will probably ever prevent an English 

 garden from exhibiting in any other country that beau- 

 ty which it does in England. There are a few excep- 

 tions, referring to maritime districts, which afford use- 

 ful hints to any who may think of displaying a British 

 country residence in any of the continental states. 



For a more particular account of the present state of 

 gardening, as well as of that of rural architecture, and 

 the general arrangement of country residences in France, 

 we refer our readers to Craft's Plans da plus beaux Jardins 

 de France et d'ltalie, $c. Paris fol. 1809 10; Laborde's 

 Description des Jardins de la France, Sfc. 181215; 

 the various works in French, Sur Architecture Rurale ; 

 and Le Grand's Histoire generate de t Architecture. 



It was our intention to have collected from these 

 works, the characteristic particulars of the domestic and 

 rural economy of France ; but we have already far ex- 

 ceeded the limits of this chapter of our article. We 

 shall only therefore add, that the Grecian style is em- 

 ployed not only in France, but everywhere on the Con- 

 tinent, to the exclusion of every other manner of build- 

 ing. 



The English style appears to have been introduced English 

 in Germany about the same period as in France, and, g^dcm 

 as might be expected, by private individuals rather than J" j^"^ 

 royal courts. The first example was a small spot, ig'jg. 

 Garten der Schwobber, laid out about the year 1750, with Garden of 

 winding walks, seats, and a rich collection of rare Schwobber. 

 plants and shrubs, in the neighbourhood of Pyrmont, 

 in Westphalia. The fine mountains which skirt the 

 valley of Pyrmont, form picturesque distances to vene- 

 rable exotics of different species, which form now the 

 chief remains of this interesting parent of the new style 

 in Germany. The next instance we shall notice, is a 



