2i6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



duction by our modern landscape gardeners affords one of the 

 most memorable instances of any recorded in the history of 

 fashions, of the extravagant absurdity, with which an insatiate 

 passion for novelty may infect a whole nation. 



By the old system of laying out ground, indeed, this incongruity 

 was in a great degree obviated : for the house being surrounded 

 by gardens, as uniform as itself, and only seen through vistas at 

 right angles, every visible accompaniment was in union with it ; 

 and the systematic regularity of the whole discernible from every 

 point of sight : but when, according to the modern fashion, all 

 around is levelled and thrown open ; and the poor square edifice 

 exposed alone, or with the accompaniment only of its regular 

 wings and portico, amidst spacious lawns interspersed with ir- 

 regular clumps or masses of wood, and sheets of water, I do 

 not know a more melancholy object ; it neither associates nor 

 harmonizes with anything; and as the beauties of symmetry, 

 which might appear in its regularity, are only perceived when that 

 regularity is seen; that is, when the building is shown from a 

 point of sight at right angles with one of the fronts, the man of 

 taste takes care that it never shall be so shown ; but that every 

 view of it shall be oblique, from the tangent of a curve in a 

 serpentine walk; from whence it appears neither quite regular, 

 nor quite irregular, but with that sort of lame and defective 

 uniformity which we see in an animal that has lost a limb. 



The view from one of these solitary mansions is still more 

 dismal than that towards it : for, at the hall door, a boundless 

 extent of open lawn presents itself in every direction, which the 

 despairing visitant must traverse before he can get into any change 

 of scenery : and to complete the congruity of the whole, the 

 clumps with which this monotonous tract is dotted, and the 

 winding stream or canal, by which it is intersected, are made as 

 neat and determinate as ever the ancient gardens were; which 

 having been professedly a work of art, and an appendage to the 

 house, the neatness and even formality of architecture were its 

 proper characteristics ; and when its terraces and borders were 



