GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



The phrase " landscape-gardening " is quite legitimate. 

 These old designers, Bridgeman, Kent, " Capability ' Brown, 

 and the rest, were true artists, though the pigments they juggled 

 with were trees, rivulets, brown earth and green grass ; and the 

 canvas they worked upon was frequently an estate of fifty, eighty, 

 or one hundred acres in extent. They had faith in their art, 

 perfect selflessness, and the prophetic vision : and hence they 

 industriously delved, and sowed, and planted, and schemed for 

 posterity ; looking forward with complete confidence and content, 

 to a future that they themselves could never hope to see ; and 

 now they rest from their labours and their work speaks for them. 

 I have said all this before I may say it again, for in studying the 

 inception and development of gardens, the consciousness that we 

 owe our present pleasure in them to the industry and forethought 

 of past generations, is ever present or it ought to be. And the 

 question arises : " Are we in our turn doing as much for those who 

 will come after us ? ' 



If we regard landscape gardening as a liberal art, then the words 

 of Walter Pater are peculiarly applicable to it. " The sensuous 

 material of each art," he says, " brings with it a special phase or 

 quality of beauty untranslatable into the form of any other art, 

 an order of impressions distinct in kind." He further reminds us 

 that " each art having, therefore, its own peculiar incommunicable 

 sensuous charm, has its own special mode of reaching the imagination, 

 its own special responsibilities to its material" Kent realized this, 

 and neglected nothing that might be likely to stimulate the fancy, 

 and unconsciously excite pleasurable or solemn emotions in the 

 spectator. Walpole says of him " that he was painter enough 

 to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionated enough 

 to dare to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great 

 system from the twilight of imperfect essays." 



He had a fine eye for proportion, and fully appreciated the 

 fascination of vistas, and long perspectives. Having banished 

 the horrors of the topiary art, he knew how so to dispose of 

 his masses of foliage whether evergreen or deciduous so that 

 in all the circling hours of the day, and in every month of 

 the year, they remained broad and effective. He made great 

 play with cedars and yews ; he knew both the preciousness of 

 harmony, and the importance of [contrast, in the colour and 



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