360 SCIENCE OF GARDENING. Part It 



Subsect. 3. Characteristic Decorations. 



1836. As characteristic decoratio?is are purely decorative, without any pretensions to 

 convenience, they should ever be very sparingly employed, and only by persons of 

 judgment and experience. A tyro in gardening will be more apt to render himself 

 ridiculous by the use of decorations, than by any other point of practice, and most apt 

 by the use of characteristic decorations. 



1837. Rocks are generally considered as parts of the foundation of the earth, and their 

 general character is that of grandeur, sometimes mixed with the singular, fantastic, or 

 romantic. Their expression forms a fine contrast to that of perishable vegetation, and 

 therefore they have been eagerly sought after in gardens, both on this account, and as 

 forming a suitable habitation for certain descriptions of plants. Plant-rockworks are 

 protuberant surfaces, or declivities irregularly covered with rocky fragments, land-stones, 

 conglomerated gravel, vitrified bricks, vitrified scoriae, flints, shells, spar, or other earthy 

 and hard mineral bodies. Such works are, in general, to be looked on more as scenes 

 of culture than of design or picturesque beauty. 



1838. Rockworks for effect or character require more consideration than most gar- 

 deners are aware of. The first tiling is to study the character of the country, and of the 

 strata of earthy materials, whether earth, gravel, sand, or rock, or a mere nucleus of either 

 of these, such as they actually exist, so as to decide whether rocks may, with propriety, 

 be introduced at all ; or, if to be introduced, of what kind, and to what extent. The 

 design being thus finally fixed on, the execution is more a matter of labor than of 

 skill. 



1839. The ruins of objects adapted by their natures or constructions to brave time, 

 have always excited veneration ; and this sentiment, forming a contrast with those emo- 

 tions raised by mere verdant scenes, has ever been esteemed very desirable in gardens. 

 Hence the attempt to produce them by forming artificial ruins, which, being absolute 

 deceptions, cannot admit of justification. If any thing is admissible in this way, it is the 

 heightening the expression of ruins which already exist, by the addition of some parts, 

 which may be supposed to have existed there when the edifice was more entire. Thus, 

 the remains of a castle-wall, not otherwise recognisable from that of a common house or 

 enclosure, may be pierced with a window or a loophole, in the style appropriate to its 

 date, or it may be heightened or extended in some degree. In other cases, turrets, or 

 pinnacles, or battlements, or chimney-tops may be added according to circumstances, and 

 as a judicious and experienced taste and antiquarian architect may direct. Unless the 

 style of the age of the ruins be adopted, the additions become worse than useless to all 

 such as are conversant in the history of architecture, of which an example may be given 

 in the modern Gothic turrets, in the grounds of White Knights, intended to represent 

 the abbey of that name, founded soon after the Norman conquest. 



1 840. Antiquities {fig. 344. ) are nearly allied to ruins, but differ from them in being 

 of some value as objects, independently of locality. They may be valuable from their 

 great age, as druidical ; from historical traditions connected with them, as stones indi- 

 cating the site of a battle, the cross-stone of an ancient town, &c. ; or from the excel- 



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