THE "LANDSCAPE-GARDEN." 105 



of garden-ornament was clean put out of mind, and 

 the grass is carried up to the windows of the great 

 house, as though the place were nothing better than 

 a farm-shanty in the wilds of Westmoreland ! 



But to return to the inauguration of the " land- 

 scape-garden." The hour produced its men in Kent, 

 and " the immortal Brown," as Repton calls him. 

 Like many another " discovery," theirs was really 

 due to an accident. Just as it was the closely-corked 

 bottle that popped that gave birth to champagne, 

 so it was only when our heroes casually leaped the 

 ha-ha that they had made that they realised that 

 all England outside was one vast rustic garden, from 

 whence it were a shame to exclude anything ! 



So began the rage for making all the surround- 

 ings of a house assume a supposed appearance of 

 rude Nature. Levelling, ploughing, stubbing-up, was 

 the order of the day. The British navvy was in 

 great request in fact the day that Kent and Brown 

 discovered England was this worthy's natal day. Arti- 

 ficial gardens must be demolished as impostures, and 

 wriggling walks and turf put where they had stood. 

 Avenues must be cut down or disregarded ; the 

 groves, the alleys, the formal beds, the terraces, the 

 balustrades, the dipt hedges must be swept away as 

 things intolerable. For the " landscape style " does 

 not countenance a straight line, or terrace or archi- 

 tectural form, or symmetrical beds about the house ; 

 for to allow these would not be to photograph 

 Nature. As carried into practice, the style demands 

 that the house shall rise abruptly from the grass, 



