THE "LANDSCAPE-GARDEN." 115 



writings did much to clear the air of the vapourings 

 of the critics who had gone before him, and his 

 practice, founded as it was upon sound principles, 

 redeemed the absurdities of the earlier phase of his 

 school and preserved others from further develop- 

 ment of the silly rusticities upon which their mind 

 seemed bent. Although some of his ideas may now 

 be thought pedantic and antiquated, the books which 

 contain them will not die. Passages like the follow- 

 ing mark the man and his aims : " I do not profess 

 to follow Le Notre or Brown, but, selecting beauties 

 from the style of each, to adopt so much of the 

 grandeur of the former as may accord with a palace, 

 and so much of the grace of the latter as may call 

 forth the charms of natural landscape. Each has its 

 proper situation ; and good taste will make fashion 

 subservient to good sense" (p. 234). " In the rage 

 for picturesque beauty, let us remember that the land- 

 scape holds an inferior rank to the historical picture ; 

 one represents nature, the other relates to man in a 

 state of society " (p. 236). 



Repton sums up the whole of his teaching in the 

 preface to his ''Theory and Practice of Landscape 

 Gardening" under the form of objections to prevail- 

 ing errors, and they are so admirable that I cannot 

 serve the purposes of my book better than to insert 

 them here. 



Objection No. i. "There is no error more 

 prevalent in modern gardening, or more frequently 

 carried to excess, than taking away hedges to unite 

 many small fields into one extensive and naked lawn ; 



I 2 



