88 On the presetii Style of Ornamental Gardening. 



our fire, resume our book, and sit at home? The first and 

 chief object of a pleasure-garden being thus, throughout the 

 greater portion of the year, denied to us. 



One great error into which we have fallen is, that nearly all 

 our gardens, such as they are, are alike. The small walled in 

 gardens of the villas in the neighbourhood of London ; the dis- 

 tribution of shrubs and flower-beds of the London squares ; the 

 college gardens of Oxford and Cambridge (to which latter 

 places our style is less objectionable than elsewhere, being, per- 

 haps it may be said, conducive to study, contemplation, and 

 repose) ; the pleasure-gcirdens of our country residences, both 

 great and small, from those of Buckingham Palace and St. 

 James's Park to the humblest parsonage, are on precisely the 

 same model. They may be said, one and all of them, to be 

 formed on a plan of which the gardens of the Petit Trianon 

 of Versailles is an admirable caricature : indeed, I can suggest 

 no better method of properly appreciating and understanding 

 our style, as well as of learning how a too strict adherence 

 to its principles rapidly exposes its errors, than a visit to some 

 of the imitations of it on the Continent, of which the gardens 

 of Malmaison and the Trianon will afford happy examples. * 



That errors such as this should have arisen in this country, 

 where real taste is not wanting, and where a set of men of 

 liberal education and cultivated minds have long presided over 

 our gardens, must be a matter of astonishment; and I can 

 account for it only by supposing that the dictum of Horace 

 Walpole has been too strictly followed. He has said, " We 

 have given the true model of gardening to the world. Let 

 other countries mimic or corrupt our taste, but let it reign 

 here on its verdant throne, original in its elegant simplicity, 

 and proud of no other art than that of softening Nature's 

 harshnesses, and copying her graceful touch." It would be 

 speaking harshly of this great arbiter of taste to say that 

 this is nonsense. To imitate Nature in Nature's works cannot 

 certainly be called art. To imitate her on canvass is art; to 

 imitate her sounds in music is art : but to imitate herself in 

 her own works is mimicry ; and if mimicry be art, surely it 

 is the lowest branch of it. The mimicry of our gardening 

 consists m makmg our gardens epitomes of our parks, as our 

 parks are more properly epitomes of our forests. I deny that it 

 is either convenient or agreeable, that it is either instrumental 

 to our pleasure or our good health, the making our gardens 



* The Park at Munich, laid out by Count Romford, in the English 

 style, is a very charming specimen of gardening, and, being away from the 

 palace, is most appropriately laid out. It is a place of recreation and 

 amusement for the citizens, &c., in summer. 



