92 KEW GARDENS 



by rival doctors of the picturesque, very apt 

 to differ, to accuse one another of quackery 

 and of malpractice in the exhibition of clumps, 

 belts, vistas and sheets of water. The Picturesque 

 and the Gardenesque became watch-words like 

 Allopathy and Homoeopathy. One practitioner 

 was judged to starve Nature, another to use the 

 knife too freely. 



To improve, adorn, and polish they profess, 

 But shave the goddess whom they came to dress. 



These artists in scenery, one of them insists, 

 on a foundation of painting and gardening " must 

 possess a competent knowledge of surveying, 

 mechanics, hydraulics, agriculture, botany, and 

 the general principles of architecture," besides 

 professing themselves cognoscenti and virtuosi. 

 They dealt with gardens mainly as one feature 

 in a larger field of operations, the laying-out of 

 parks, pleasure-ground, jermes ornees, and such 

 fanciful paradises as Shenstone made famous at 

 the Leasowes. Into the park, of course, the 

 garden proper passes by transition over the 

 lawn turf that is the special beauty of English 

 culture, often separated from less trim outskirts 

 by the invisible barrier of a sunk fence, said to 

 have been Kent's invention, but this statement 



