GHISWIGK HOUSE 



than they would be if employed by a painter in the composition 

 of a picture." 



His contemporary, Wheatley, in his introduction to his " Ob- 

 servations on modern gardening," claims for landscape-gardening, 

 " in the perfection to which it has been lately brought in England," 

 not only a considerable place among the liberal arts, " but also 

 that it is as superior to landscape painting as a reality to a re- 

 presentation . . . being relieved now," he says, " from the restraints 

 of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic con- 

 venience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble 

 scenes of nature are within its province." But Wheatley, like 

 Walpole, held that artificial aids to the picturesque were not only 

 justifiable, but necessary, to make Nature natural ; and therefore, 

 to deceive successfully, soon became an end in itself. " In wild 

 and romantic scenes," he remarks, " may be introduced a ruined 

 and low bridge, of which some arches may be still standing, and 

 the loss of those which are fallen may be supplied by a few planks, 

 with a rail thrown over the vacancy. It is a picturesque object : 

 it suits the situation, and if due care be taken in certain respects, 

 it gives an imposing air of reality." 



Thus it was that when topiary work, which is the clipping and 

 training of trees and shrubs into shapes, had had its day, when 

 French gardening and Dutch gardening were beginning to pall, 

 a reaction set in. Stiffness and conventionality went out of vogue, 

 and under the Georges, fashions in gardens soon passed to the other 

 extreme. No device was omitted, no sham was too barefaced, that 

 might contribute to the desired effect of picturesqueness, freedom 

 of growth, and apparent naturalness, while to secure a prospect, 

 to carry the eye up to a given point, no sacrifice was too great. 

 The walls of the old Elizabethan garden disappeared, and the sunk 

 fence or " Ha Ha" took its place. Trees were carefully planted just 

 where they would look best in twenty, forty or fifty years' time. 



" Those groups and belts of trees and avenues of varied timber 

 which have actually clothed a scenery upon the simple undulations 

 of the midlands," says the author of " Horace Walpole's World," 

 " result from no pure accident of benevolent nature ; they are 

 a heritage from that strange century, a legacy (even if in a second 

 or third degree) from opulent designers who sketched the picturesqu e 

 by the mile." 



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