Horace Walpole. 191 



Dutch and Italian influences had operated, 

 and, on the whole, no doubt, benefici- 

 ally, on English taste, and had enlarged 

 the resources as well as the views of our 

 countrymen. 



Walpole very properly condemns, as Pope 

 had already ridiculed in verse, the insipid 

 geometrical style of laying out grounds, 

 which prevailed, till a reform in such matters 

 was accomplished by Bridgman, Kent, Capa- 

 bility Brown, and others, in the second half 

 of the last century. 



" The compass and square," says the Essay, " were 

 of more use in plantation than the nursery-man. 

 The measured walk, the quincunx, and the etoile 

 imposed their unsatisfying sceneries on our royal and 

 noble gardens. Trees were headed, and their sides 

 pared away ; many French groves seem green chests 

 set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and 

 summer houses terminated every vista, and symmetry, 

 even where the space was too large to permit its being 

 remarked at one view, was an essential that, as Pope 

 observed 



' . . . Each alley has a brother, 

 And half the garden just reflects the other.' 



Knots of flowers were more defensibly subjected to 



