298 



GARDEN CRAFT IN EUROPE 



he says, " you see nothing regular and nothing levelled ; the gardener's line is 

 unknown here. Nature never plants anything in line, the windings of paths 

 and streams in their intentional irregularity are designed with art, the better 

 to prolong the promenades, hide the extent of the island, and increase its 

 apparent size." 



Horace Walpole never made a greater mistake than when he predicted 

 the failure of the introduction of the English garden in France. " The 



people of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury," says Riat, " with their 

 refined cultivation, their ex- 

 quisite delicacy and remark- 

 able adaptability, perceived 

 at once all the advantages of 

 Kent's theories and did not 

 trouble themselves that the 

 innovation proceeded from 

 England." French society 

 had passed through such 

 changes that the architec- 

 tural garden of Le Notre 

 was no longer suitable. In 

 France, as in England, it was 

 left to literature to lead 

 Fashion away from the best 

 ideals of the Formal gar- 

 den. Langier was the first 

 French author to popularize 

 the English style of garden- 

 ing in his Essai sur V Archi- 

 tecture^ published in 1753. In 1760 Thompson's Seasons was translated 

 into French, and the following year Rousseau wrote La nouvelle Heloise 

 with the description of the landscape garden of Clarens. In 1770 appeared 

 Les Ruines des -plus beaux Monuments de la Grece ; in 1 764, Les Saisons, 

 by Saint-Lambert ; in 1777, La Composition des Pay sages, by the Marquis 

 de Girardin ; then, in 1779, ^^ Jar din de Monceau, by Carmontelle, and 

 in 1784, Etudes de la Nature, by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre ; in 1787, Paul 



ENGLISH GARDEN AT THE PETIT TRIANON. 



